A Developer, Graphic Artist and mentor. Fabio Sasso, a Brazilian designer living in Porto Alegre (South of Brazil) is one of the popular in the category of designer in web right now. He wrote a great article in his website called “Abduzeedo” and he also wrote great tutorials of illustration and photoshop in PSDTUTS.com.
The Interview:
Welcome Fabio in our talented people section in WGPP. I would like to thank you for this great conversation (interview).
Thank you for having me. It’s an honor to get this opportunity.
1. When did you start in Graphic Design and Web Development?
I started working with computers in 1992/93, back in the day where there were only DOS and some crazy DOS based software (at lease here in Brazil). The first tools I used were Harvard Graphics for DOS, then Corel Draw and Photoshop.
With the internet, my first contact was in 97/98 and a bit before of that with the BBSs. But after 97 my brother and I started creating some personal pages, like, I remember my first table based design, it was the coolest thing on earth.
2. What is your “deep” inspiration when you designing your beautiful graphic design and web design?
It depends on what I have to do. For my blog, for example, the inspiration is space and alien abduction. Also lately I’ve been really inspired by the 80’s. Mainly by its colors and light effects. If you look at the blog you’ll notice that.
Now for the tutorials, I don’t have any deep inspiration. My inspirations are derived from user suggestions, effects I like, or simply ideas I have and want to try out in Photoshop.
3. In your photoshop and illustrator tutorials its all good and very easy to understand, can you share a technique when writing a tutorials?
There are some people that like a very detailed explanation, showing all the values and steps to create the design. I’ve never liked that kind of tutorial, mainly because after you finish the tutorial you haven’t learnt how to use the tool but just to do that certain effect. Like the coolest thing in learning is the experimentation, sometimes by just changing one value you can get a totally different effect or a different detail. So, that is what I try to reproduce in my tutorials.
4. Do you believe and follow the “Web Design Trends” or you always want to be a unique designer?
That depends on the kind of project and the audience of the product. For abduzeedo, I try to follow some trends but most of the time I do what I think is cool for me and for the readers. For professional projects it’s more complicated because some of the clients don’t even know the new trends and are sort of stuck to the trends from the past.
The idea of being a unique designer is very hard because, as designers, at least in my opinion, we have to be able to create different styles of work always aimed to a specific audience and a target; not just the aesthetics part of it.
5. In your website, what is the design process?
My design process for abduzeedo is very simple: we analyze the statistics to see how the site is working and we try to identify problems and the solutions for them. For the new design the idea was to incorporate more of the elements of space and abduction. In order to do that we added the stars and some illustrations on the footer and header. However, the site grew a bit more than we expected, so we had to make a few adjustments. The problem was that the site has a lot of content and it’s not easy to find them. Again the design was totally related with a subject and the needs of the readers.
After the information above is gathered, I started designing the structure and the last thing was the site’s aesthetics.
6. What tools of trades are you using? (Hardware and Software)
For web design my favorite tools are Fireworks for the design, CSSEdit for the CSS, and Textmate for the code. Also, we use Drupal as our CMS for most of our clients. Now for hardware, I have a Macbook Pro 15 with 3GB RAM that I use with a 22″ monitor.
7. Can you give an inspirational word to all aspiring web and graphic designer around the world.
Try, experiment and have fun. Don’t be dissappointed when your image or effect is not turning out the way you want. Keep working. That happens with me all the time. When I first start designing, usually I get frustrated that my design is not becoming exactly what I had in mind. However it turns out that after I have all elements in my design it’s easier to make it look the way I want.
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Fabio Sasso
A Developer, Graphic Artist and mentor. Fabio Sasso, a Brazilian designer living in Porto Alegre (South of Brazil) is one of the popular in the category of designer in web right now. He wrote a great article in his website called “Abduzeedo” and he also wrote great tutorials of illustration and photoshop in PSDTUTS.com.
The Interview:
Welcome Fabio in our talented people section in WGPP. I would like to thank you for this great conversation (interview).
Thank you for having me. It’s an honor to get this opportunity.
1. When did you start in Graphic Design and Web Development?
I started working with computers in 1992/93, back in the day where there were only DOS and some crazy DOS based software (at lease here in Brazil). The first tools I used were Harvard Graphics for DOS, then Corel Draw and Photoshop.
With the internet, my first contact was in 97/98 and a bit before of that with the BBSs. But after 97 my brother and I started creating some personal pages, like, I remember my first table based design, it was the coolest thing on earth.
2. What is your “deep” inspiration when you designing your beautiful graphic design and web design?
It depends on what I have to do. For my blog, for example, the inspiration is space and alien abduction. Also lately I’ve been really inspired by the 80’s. Mainly by its colors and light effects. If you look at the blog you’ll notice that.
Now for the tutorials, I don’t have any deep inspiration. My inspirations are derived from user suggestions, effects I like, or simply ideas I have and want to try out in Photoshop.
3. In your photoshop and illustrator tutorials its all good and very easy to understand, can you share a technique when writing a tutorials?
There are some people that like a very detailed explanation, showing all the values and steps to create the design. I’ve never liked that kind of tutorial, mainly because after you finish the tutorial you haven’t learnt how to use the tool but just to do that certain effect. Like the coolest thing in learning is the experimentation, sometimes by just changing one value you can get a totally different effect or a different detail. So, that is what I try to reproduce in my tutorials.
4. Do you believe and follow the “Web Design Trends” or you always want to be a unique designer?
That depends on the kind of project and the audience of the product. For abduzeedo, I try to follow some trends but most of the time I do what I think is cool for me and for the readers. For professional projects it’s more complicated because some of the clients don’t even know the new trends and are sort of stuck to the trends from the past.
The idea of being a unique designer is very hard because, as designers, at least in my opinion, we have to be able to create different styles of work always aimed to a specific audience and a target; not just the aesthetics part of it.
5. In your website, what is the design process?
My design process for abduzeedo is very simple: we analyze the statistics to see how the site is working and we try to identify problems and the solutions for them. For the new design the idea was to incorporate more of the elements of space and abduction. In order to do that we added the stars and some illustrations on the footer and header. However, the site grew a bit more than we expected, so we had to make a few adjustments. The problem was that the site has a lot of content and it’s not easy to find them. Again the design was totally related with a subject and the needs of the readers.
After the information above is gathered, I started designing the structure and the last thing was the site’s aesthetics.
6. What tools of trades are you using? (Hardware and Software)
For web design my favorite tools are Fireworks for the design, CSSEdit for the CSS, and Textmate for the code. Also, we use Drupal as our CMS for most of our clients. Now for hardware, I have a Macbook Pro 15 with 3GB RAM that I use with a 22″ monitor.
7. Can you give an inspirational word to all aspiring web and graphic designer around the world.
Try, experiment and have fun. Don’t be dissappointed when your image or effect is not turning out the way you want. Keep working. That happens with me all the time. When I first start designing, usually I get frustrated that my design is not becoming exactly what I had in mind. However it turns out that after I have all elements in my design it’s easier to make it look the way I want.
Take a look of his work:
All images are property of Mr. Fábio Sasso
Fábio Sasso
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Date Filed: Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
Filed under: Featured Web Trends, Talented People
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