As a part of the MacStories Apps Tree event ,I had the chance to interview John O’Nolan, graphic / web designer and blogger who runs an amazing blog: john.onolan.org.
This is 11th of many interviews and guest posts I’ll publish on MacStories during this week.
Enjoy!
Hi! Can you please introduce yourself to MacStories readers?
Sure! My name is John O’Nolan and I’m a graphic designer + web developer from Worthing, West Sussex, in the United Kingdom. About a year ago I founded and incorporated my own web design agency (lyricalmedia), and since then I’ve been blogging about web design business on my personal blog with a modest amount of success.
What can you tell us about the design scene in your country?
The design industry in the UK is pretty strong, some of the more recogniseable names from here are Chris Spooner, Elliot Jay Stocks, Ryan Carson, Mark Boulton, Mike Kus, Andy Budd, and several others that I’m sure I’m forgetting. Of course the internet reduces boundaries, so of my large network of friends in the industry; less than half of them are located in the same country.
Your blog has become pretty popular among the designers out there. How many people work for it? Can you please tell us something about your setup?
That’s very kind of you to say! It’s always nice to get some recognition however I’m not under any delusions, my blog is a tiny drop in the ocean compared to some of the amazing sites out there. Currently it’s just me writing the blog (it is titled with my own name after all), however I do hope to expand a little in 2010 to have some more guest bloggers featured on the site.
My setup consists primarily of a 24” iMac, a 13” Macbook, and a wall mounted monitor - when it comes to doing lots of things at the same time, a lot of screen real-estate and a total of 8GB of RAM really does make a difference!
Aside from that I use a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet for illustration work, a Nikon D40 for photography, a lot of networked hard-drives to store everything on, and an iPhone of course to keep me going when I’m on the move.
Which are your favourite Mac apps? The ones you find more useful?
There are certainly a few to mention - obviously there’s all the Adobe Creative Suite software, but everyone always talks about those so there’s no point going over them! The apps I find most useful on a day-to-day basis are Dropbox - which syncs files across all my computers, LittleSnapper - to keep track of all the inspirational websites and digital artists that I come across, and Tweetdeck - which keeps a constant stream of tweets from the design community on my screen!
Browsers. Which one do you use and why?
If I wasn’t a web designer I would be using Safari - no question. But unfortunately despite it’s unbelievable RAM usage and frequent instability… nothing beats Firefox when it comes to web development. The extensions and plugins that I use every day (notably the web developer toolbar, screengrab, delicious, and firebug) are so handy that it makes it worth putting up with everything else.
In your opinion, which is the biggest challenge a designer has to face when switching from Windows to Mac?
Very little - I think as a designer the switch from PC to Mac is one of the easiest ones out there. I mean you have to get used to the fact that the keyboard shortcuts are all very slightly different, but I wouldn’t exactly call that a “big challenge”. I can’t really think of anything that I struggled with when making the switch, if anything I found even more apps that weren’t available to me before, and the ones which I used to use were already available across both platforms.
Let’s talk about the Adobe CS suite for Mac. Many people think it’s a simple porting of the Windows version, with an outdated UI and not so many “Apple style” features. Your opinion?
This is painfully true, in a big way. When Microsoft bought a large amount of stock in Apple in the late 90’s part of the deal was that Microsoft would have to make MS Office for the Mac for at least the next 10 years. If you look at MS Office 2004 for Mac you’ll see that the guys at Microsoft got some ridiculous notion that the user interface should consist of a toolbar permanently attached to the top of the screen, and then lots of additional windows for the documents. No native Mac application that I know of has ever been designed this way, and for good reason - it really sucks.
For some reason though, the minds at Adobe decided to take this exact same approach with their Creative Suite - and it really isn’t ideal.
For the amount of money I’ve spent on my Adobe license, I’d like to actually see them make a dedicated product for the Mac - but to be completely honest with you, I can’t see it happening. Creative Suite has no real competition, and therefor no real incentive to do anything better.
I’m a big supporter of web-based applications, and as browsers get more and more powerful I’ll be interested to look into the SAAS graphics editing programs that start popping up.
Do you use a specific software to organize all your work stuff like Yojimbo or Evernote, or do you still prefer a well organized Finder?
I have a copy of Evernote, but I’ve never got round to using it - so I’ve got a very rigorous folder structure in Finder at the moment. There are so many apps around it’s often hard to know which ones are worth investing time and money in. If anyone has any genuine recommendations in this area - please let me know in the comments, I’m certainly interested!
Is there something of Mac OS X interface you’d change? Or do you think it’s already perfect?
This is dangerous territory, I’m not sure if I consider myself enough of a heavyweight designer to assume I know better than any of the great minds who designed OSX.
I can comment on something I’d change about the design of the Apple hardware though: Let’s get rid of optical drives already. I use CDs/DVDs in my Macs maybe once or twice a year - the rest of the time they just take up a huge amount of space inside the machines. I can’t think of a single piece of software that could not be made downloadable rather than ship on a disk. Music and video has gone this way already… and anything that genuinely is too big could be shipped on a USB key. This wouldn’t work for PC users, especially gamers, but when it comes to Macs I really can’t think of any need for a SuperDrive in the future.
I suppose you’re a Windows user as well. Do you think the Mac platform is more suitable for designers? Is it possible to achieve good results on Windows too?
As with anything, the skill is within the person. A great designer can produce great results with poor hardware in the same way that a great athlete can produce great results with poor shoes, or a photographer with a poor camera. Having the right tools for the job doesn’t make you any better, it just makes your job easier. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using Windows for a web designer, and contrary to how I may have made it sound in the previous paragraph, I really don’t think that Windows is any worse for graphic/web design than a Mac. If we were talking about video editing or 3D rendering then I’d have a somewhat different view, but for basic design you can’t draw any clear lines between the two other than user preference.
Overall I think there’s too much Windows bashing going on. Some Mac users are becoming like over-zealous Christians. Both groups are trying to convert everyone else to their way of thinking, and guess what? “Everyone” isn’t interested, they’re happy with what they’ve got. Don’t get me wrong here, I converted to Macs about 5 years ago and I’ve barely touched a PC since - but I really don’t subscribe to the Apple religion. Macs aren’t perfect, or superior, it’s simply personal preference - live and let live.
As a designer / blogger, what would you like to receive for Christmas?
My Amazon wishlist is 4 pages long! It mostly consists of design, programming, writing, and business books - as well as some hi-tech gadgetry that I’m dying to get my greasy claws on. If anyone has an overwhelming urge to get me something for Christmas you can find the list here.
Thanks for chatting with us! And keep up the great work with your blog!
The pleasure was all mine - thanks for having me!
