Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Damian Madray, a designer currently located in Canada. How are you Damian?

I’m doing fine. Just busy with school, work and play (meaning dC).

To start off, please tell us about yourself.

Well, what can I say. I’m a 21 year old aspiring graphic designer in areas of print and web. I’m from Guyana (very small an unknown country) but I’m now studying Graphic Design at Art Institute of Toronto. I basically taught myself the technical skills needed for design and coupled it with what I’d like to think is a keen sense of what looks Good. I developed a love for design and met many talented designers that inspired me along the way like Keith Gosnell and Ryan Ford who really amazing people. As my love grew I decided to take my knowledge to a formal level and attend a design college. All along this journey I ended up being Admin of designers’COUCH and Gallery Director of deviantART Designs and Interface gallery. So far it’s been a great journey of learning, hard critiques and making many cool ‘online’ friends. This journey isn’t yet over and each day I work hard whether its on a personal project, client project or class work to master my craft and not be the best designer but to be acknowledged by the best.

To view my work please check my personal portfolio or my dA account.

When did you first take an interest in web design?

Took the interest back in 2004. It came from being online and chatting too much. Then a friend said, I wish there was a community online that I could just chill and meet people. Right there and then my journey in design began. Not once did I think I’d be this deep into design.

What is your general opinion on current trends in design and development, such as Web 2.0 and AJAX, etc.? Are you happy with the direction the web is taking?

Well, first off, I’m designer more than coder. I stopped doing CSS/XHTML for the while much less the heavier stuff. However, I do have general knowledge of AJAX and web 2.0. So, onto the question. Firstly, I wasn’t aware that we were using web 1.0. in the first place. In my opinion Web 2.0 is just a term used out of context to make people sound smart and make a few extra buck from unsuspecting clients. What’s being done now in web 2.0 was being done for quite a while now so the term was coined to describe current and future technologies not to define new and innovative technologies. When Flash Media hit the web by storm, how come we didn’t coin the term web 2.0 then? And that was a major advancement in web technology as web 2.0 it is now. AJAX is sweet. I love what can be done with it but again, it’s not new. Bottom line, new or old, I love where web technology is going and I’d like to get into the heavier stuff like flash programming. The thing is, what ever your imagination can conjure, it can be done using a combination of technology such as AJAX, xml, actionscripting, etc so sky is the limit. My only worry is that the use for front-end designers is minimizing as people just need a simple interface and 80% of the budget goes into back-end development. There’s no doubt that’s where the money lies. But hey, don’t despair, do what you love and according to an article I read Web Design is on the top 3 spot for jobs of 2007. It’s just a matter of making ourselves more relevant and by that I mean learning a bit of back-end work. (God I hope I take my own advice) Don’t for one moment think design will become irrelevant because of the growing demand for programmers to handle all the programming languages out there because designers are the ones who’s work interfaces consumers and as a result we’ll always be relevant.

Now, one of the reasons we’re having this interview, is because you are, if I’m not mistaken, one of the driving forces behind the Designer’s Couch, one of the largest communities that I’ve seen on DeviantArt. How did you get involved in this?

Yes, one of the things I’m proud of in life as a designer is to lead a community of my peers who are all passionate about design. These are the people who inspire me everyday to do what I do at dC. When asked in class who’s my favourite artist, I say go on dA and visit designers’COUCH. I basically got involved right after joining the club. Keithar invited me to be admin because he thought I was passionate about the club. After that, I’ve been pretty much pushing designersCOUCH to be more than a club on deviantART.

As far as I know, Designer’s Couch isn’t going to be a DeviantArt club for too much longer, as there is an official website in the works. Can you tell us a few things about the upcoming site that we can look forward to?

No it won’t or at least that’s what I’m pushing for. You’ve all seen the winning design. We’ve pretty much been tweaking the design, discussing and implementing features. dC won’t just be another design community, we hope to make an impact on the design community in a positive way, have a community with members who’ll contribute and be active having respect for each other’s work. Some of the features you can expect are inspirational gallery, forum, portfolio. Yes, I know basically standard stuff but please, don’t jump to conclusion that we’ll offer the same old features in the same old way. dC will focus a lot more on our members and what they can learn from us and each other as oppose to site features.

Apart from features and website, I’ve been trying to formalize things at dC like having a board and executive director, advisor and what not. We’re pretty much sorting that out. Order and organization must be among the group administration before it can be among the community. We’re also working on a brand for dC and our creative team is even working on a custom font. Just bare in mind, Rome wasn’t built in a day so all these things will only take time. All I ask is for you guys to remain active, have patience and keep supporting dC.

What do you think makes a good website?

In my opinion what makes a site good is how functional it is, if it achieves it purpose, its simplicity and easy navigation of course. Visually, its up to the client and lets not forget design is subjective (I swear I say that every 2 days).

If the world of web design would take one word of advice from you, what would that advice be?

Know the line between inspiration and stealing (ripping). There’s lots of things I could have chosen from but no one ever touches this topic in design. My design teacher told me that everyone strives to be original and it affects us because it restrains us from being creative. I agree with him and every designer takes inspiration from somewhere, whether it be Swiss designers, German designers or a talented unknown designer on dA. However, while you draw inspiration from those people, try to apply yourself, your style and what you feel in the design and you’d be surprised that your work looks nothing similar to what really inspired it and that’s what makes it YOUR work. Joshua Davis, who is one arguably one of the best designers today does his illustration work from a flash program he wrote, port it to illustrator and add his magic. So be inspired but be original at the same time.

Where do you see yourself in the years to come?

Honestly and I really mean it, I don’t know. 14 months ago, I didn’t think I’d be in Canada studying design or running a design group like dC or even being Gallery Director on dA. I can tell you where I’d like to be and that would be a designer at a recognized firm as a graphic designer for a few years. Then maybe start up a design firm on my own but that’s as much as I could want because life has a way of biting you in the butt when least expected so I won’t plan too much.

What future web technologies are you looking forward to?

Well I’m excited more about the technologies available now. Do you see the things google is doing? Pretty impressive with their email, calendar, documents, etc. Ajax is really, really kicking up a storm bringing life to the Internet. No longer is the web a place of static websites. Adobe/Macromedia with their actionscript 3.0 is just going take flash to a whole new level. See how the guys over at 2advanced are combining actionscripting and design to give a whole new experience? We’re doing it all now and what we’ll keep doing for a while is building upon past technology making it new. However, I do envision a time when we’ll put on a pair of shades, and shop online in a virtual store from comforts of our home. That my friend is NEW and innovative technology that takes the web to a whole new level or are they doing that already? :)

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions. Any final words?

No, thank you for interviewing me. Hope I made sense. Final words would be, watch our for designersCOUCH website at www.designerscouch.org

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