my name is Frank Chimero I run a solo design studio I've been doing that about
15 years now and we make books and websites and brands for our clients
you
yeah so it probably makes the most sense to try to describe some of the problems
that we were seeing because we didn't have like a clear idea of what the
solution would be we just need what the problems were so initially we were kind
of interested in the way that design teams work together so we were more
interested in like working methods instead of necessarily tools
specifically and it was kind of difficult because designers couldn't
really work in the same place at the same time they would sort of be stepping
on each other's toes opening the same file there was no clear organization to
it and there was no really good way to just
capture the decision-making process or keep a record of work that was created
but maybe not approves were developed so when we looked at all those problems
together we sort of realized like oh wow these are things that our engineering
and development friends have already solved for themselves and they use
version control to do it so we thought well can we make version control for
ourselves to try to manage a little bit of the sprawl about the number of files
that you have the number of places that you need to look to try to gather
information about the work and to try to get the information about the changes
and the ideas and the opinions about the work as close to where the work is shown
as possible so really the way that we chose to solve
those problems was by creating a tool that wasn't necessarily like a new kind
of drawing tool what we wanted to do was to make software that supported a
certain way of working where like you said a methodology so that's why I
abstract came from and yeah I'm happy to say that it's like working really nicely
for large teams and I use it on my own myself so goes the full gamut
oh I'll just be honest I I don't know I really don't know so the
things that are typically presented is like the next wave of Technology for
design to focus on it's things like artificial reality VR artificial
intelligence and those sorts of things and I was trained as a print designer
and then it came to the web because I loved publishing you know I loved layout
I loved publishing I liked writing and all of those things have very little to
do with everything in that list I suppose that perhaps like if you're
working with like an artificial intelligence like spoken interface
there's a lot of writing there but it isn't necessarily like prose or a
narrative writing which is interesting so as far as like how design overlaps
with them I'm not the person to answer that I think it is interesting though
that all of those things sort of share a similar visual capacity which is not
very much at all in terms of like regimented control it's more
environmental especially when it comes to like VR they're more conditional as
well so perhaps it means that new tools will need to be invented to work inside
of those those spaces but at this point I think I think you need to talk to
people on the cusp of it you know
well I think one of the nice things about most traffic coming through mobile
is that there is like a very nice purity and reliance on typography which I
really like because I trained as a print designer and liked typography was the
first and I loved about that so developing type systems and relying on
type to try to communicate hierarchy structure and like nuance and meaning
where it might be very difficult to explain pictorially I think is a big
change in terms of like what seems to work better in a mobile context it's
also more performant right it's easier to scan the other thing that I really
like about it is that the layout just can't get that complicated you know so
things tend to happen instead of in terms of like complicated layouts they
tend to happen more in like layers where things sort of stack up vertically on
top of one another because there's just not very much a range of space
you know like lengthen with wise so you're kind of working more on the
z-axis which is also interesting but it's you know it's like it's
fundamentally different problem and part of the pleasure of it is that the real
estate for it is so self-contained that it kind of feels like you have fewer
tools but you can kind of like flex the control in those things a little bit
more effectively
so I think my setups pretty common so are you sketch sometimes Photoshop for
more complicated things illustrator for vector drawings iconography things like
that and then a lot of markup inside of something like atom and then version
control through abstract and github and I think that that stack is pretty well
standardized across most people when it comes to prototyping
I mostly would just rather get into markup than to do anything other than
that one thing though that I sort of see as a potential spot for more efficiency
though is to try to figure out a way to get my clients to sort of loosen their
grip on seeing images and to try to get to a prototype sooner so one of the
things that's been interesting for me to look into is some CSS frameworks like
tachyons or something like that where you can just bang together a layout
really quickly whether or not you want to use it for the final product I think
just being able to vary lucidly put together something in the browser
whether it's the final output or if it's just almost like this temporary
scaffolding prototype thing that you're put putting together I think that that
is something that all probably taking a closer look at this year what the
options are for something like that
not a lot mostly because I don't really do a lot of fancy interactivity you know
my design philosophy is like mostly no razzle dazzle when I do explorations I
really want to have a strong concept behind it and oftentimes that means an
idea behind the kind of energy that we're using or the tone of the copy or a
particular like layout method that might tie into like the ideology of the brand
or the client or something like that and it typically has less to do with things
that might typically be a sacrifice on accessibility so I think just through my
own personal preferences and biases that's less of a compromise than it may
be with other people's and clinicians so I just don't really wind up in that
situation very often there's always explaining to do and there's always
client requests that sometimes you'll need to help guide them and educate them
about the cost of some choices but for the most part things have gone pretty
smoothly on that field
yeah well everybody's been on hotel Wi-Fi so everybody knows what a big fat
slow web site feels like so oftentimes all you have to do is just help the
client understand what the cost of their requests are and you just navigate it
you know there's no clear solutions it's not a combat it's more of like a
negotiation and oftentimes what really happens is when throughout my career
whenever I've had like a disagreement with a client about what needs to happen
it's not symptomatic of me being right and then being wrong or the other
situation where they're right and I'm wrong it actually typically means that
we're both wrong and that there's like a third possibility there about what
actually is going to be more accessible and more performant that meets their
needs so their recommendations are typically sort of a very encoded request
for me to try to fulfill a certain need in there trying to forecast like what
visual solution we can make for that one actually it's something that neither one
of us has like considered yet so yeah it's just part of like an exploration
collaboration and like education process and for the most part there's been so
little conflict with clients in that regard because my new strategy is just
to simply say like what if we tried something completely different and that
seems to go pretty well because then you get to discover it at the same time
it's interesting right now I'm not really sure where it's going to go that
new batch of technological potential like a RvR AI all the other acronyms
they are dependent on the web but they don't necessarily feel like they're like
on the internet you know they're not like pages or apps you know so it's kind
of interesting because the the web then sort of becomes more of an
infrastructure that we're building on top of and I've always liked web pages
you know like my first sites like it's like oh they're just documents I got to
point to each other and I still really like the idea of the web as a set of
length documents so for me I'm sort of ambivalent about the future of the web
you know because we have this new batch of things over here which I'm not quite
certain of like the it's not inspiring to me and that's just like preference
you know that's not about like the potential of the technology at all and
then we have this other thing over here which I think everybody takes for
granted so what I'm hoping is that maybe there's more people like me who look at
this batch of technology that feels like it's of a kind and they're less
interested in that and maybe we can go back to some of the loosely length
documents and think about how we can come at that fresh that's exciting to me
but we'll see what happens we'll see what happens and I think it ultimately
comes down to like where designers and engineers when I like point there extra
energy so we will see