David Ronnie
www.theflattestcat.comDR: Been heavily involved in the web-side of graphic design for close to 6 years now. Started out learning Photoshop around v4 because I seen the like of AndyArt and InfiniteFish around the web and was amazed by everything they did, then it progressed into more modern design that you seen in print that is more evident across the web now (heavy manipulations, intelligent clean design, etc....not just bevels and metal)
Design education: Took a 1 month summer course at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology to decide if I still really wanted to go into design or not (started to lose interest near my later years of high school). Then when I realized I did, I took a 6-month course at Guru Digital Arts to learn the bits and pieces that I didn't know, mostly the print process and some flash stuff.
How did you start out as an artist and designer? I was always drawing when I was a little kid (not particularly well mind you...) and it just gradually developed. Took art in junior high, and then I got a computer and found all the graphic design stuff on the web and started learning Photoshop immediately after that.
What inspires you? I find my greatest inspiration to be the web itself. K10K is a daily needed fix, and if that isn't enough I usually end up hitting up DIK, Computerlove, or one of the other zines out there. I love a lot of printed work, but it's never as readily available to me as web stuff. I don't have a collection of interesting printed materials yet (due to lack of money for now...), however I plan on developing that as soon as I get some cash flow ehm....flowing.
Describe your style of design: I have a fairly dynamic style...I usually just develop what I envision the client needing. In the case of theflattestcat.com, it is all very clean and professional, but I was shooting for that look because I wanted the focus to be on my work that I've done and to make it easily navigate able. I've followed most of the trends over the past 6 years; from dirty to the 3d thing to the gradients of the last year...so I have a fairly dynamic repertoire of design styles...but for the most part, if I had to sum it up in one word, it would be "contrast". I always strive to have clearly defined navigation, visual elements, etc. I try to make the key components of a design as easily recognizable as possible.
What are your bad design habits?Too much coffee at work, too much coke and junk food at home. Although now living on my own has slimmed down the amount of extraneous money I have for jamming at home with a bag of twizzlers and a "liter of cola" (re: Super Troopers). However the coffee is still free at work...so I gotta work on that one a bit :)
What are your thoughts on today's New Media Designers? I think New Media Designers are just amazing. To be truly successful they have to have a purely stellar skillset. They have to be able know html (and all of the handy little table hacks and such, as well as knowledge of browser/resolution issues), CSS (and it's soon getting to the point of all the CSS hacks too), some JavaScript knowledge, probably some PHP knowledge, and flash actionscript is almost absolutely necessary today too. On top of all that knowledge, they have to know how to create gorgeous, intuitive layouts to client specifications, which involves a deep knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator. Then they often have to learn all the quirks to go with print, and often times will end up doing some sort of video production in their career also. The amount of knowledge required to be a successful New Media Designer is truly just amazing.
What do you do besides design? I play a lot of video games, and try to go to the gym almost everyday (that was going well until Christmas hit...). I used to play a lot of soccer until I moved into the city and no longer have a vehicle.
How would you compare today's Graphic Design Styles from 40 years ago?I've always heard that graphic design was a reflection of society, and I think it is as evident today as it ever was. Much of the design done today is very techy with lots of heavy overlays, and tons of little things added to the design. Majority of design used to be a lot more simple. Today's design is a reflection of the constant barrage we encounter in day-to-day encounters. People put up with tons of little things everyday, emails, instant messages, phones, faxes, newspapers, billboards, TV, movies, cell phones, pagers, PDAS, it's just a constant barrage of information and think it is witnessed in the heavily laden graphic designs of the last 5 - 10 years.
What is more important for a designer, artistic qualities or design education? Choose one: I think you need a strong balance between them, but artistic qualities will get you much farther than a design education will. Artistic qualities are what drive you create visually interesting designs. You can have the strongest design education in the world, but if you don't have the creativity (the most crucial artistic quality) to experiment with the programs, the designs, or the technologies at your disposal, you will become stagnant and it will be evident in every facet of your production cycle. Everything will come out looking the same, with the same colors, the same layout, everything. Passion, another artistic quality, is extremely important to graphic/web designers. Passion is what drives every creative person to develop and progress. Passion keeps them from stagnating because they always want to be bigger and better than what they just were. Stagnation is death to any truly creative person.
How long have you been creating Vector Art?Only for a couple of years now, I never really started to get a grasp on the pen tool until about 2 years ago, and it was actually doing the tracing of that J-Lo image that you see on my site that I really learned how to use it. I realized that I needed to learn some base vector skills because of the flash explosion as well as the appearance of vector elements starting to appear in websites online. I got about halfway through the book and decided to try it out on just vectorizing a normal image. Turned out that it wasn't as hard I had thought it was. However I still have no real drawing ability, so most of my illustrations still rely on photos.
You're a well-rounded Artist in fields of Photography, Pixel, Vector and Flash. What do you prefer working with?I can't say I truly enjoy one more than the other. Most of my experience lies in doing interesting photo manipulations and using them as visual elements for websites. I like doing vector stuff now and then...but most of the time I only use it for creating identities, or small visual elements for overlaying into photo manipulations and websites. I have no traditional drawing skill though, so maybe that's why I don't enjoy vector as much, heh. I really love the challenge of Flash, especially now that I've gained a deep understanding of Actionscript and can do everything I envision. I would love to get into doing more photography but I'm waiting until I can afford a shiny new Canon G5 so that I can bring some of the elements of traditional SLR photography (time-lapse, filters, lenses, etc.) into my digital photography.
I really enjoy the whole creation process and whatever it entails, photography, pixel, vector, flash, html, css, etc., but if I had to be limited I would say photography and pixel, since for me they are ultimately tied into one another. Plus, you really only need notepad to make web sites...
Music is a huge influence on designers what's your choice of music?I don't really have any choice per say, it really all depends on what mood I'm in. Ultimately I'm a rocker, I can always turn on Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Finger Eleven, A Perfect Circle, The White Stripes, System of a Down, Audioslave, Deftones, Disturbed, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Rage Against the Machine, Trust Company, or a thousand others and just jam and be happy. However I have grown into an avid hip-hop junky over the last few years and regularly listen to all the Shady/Aftermath artists as well as Nas, Jay-Z, The Roots, etc. All the above mentioned I listen to most of the time when I'm working on the computer, however when I'm away from the computer reading or chilling with company I listen to a lot of more chill stuff like Radiohead (altho I listen to them a lot when working too), Tegan and Sarah, Po'Girl, The Be Good Tanyas, etc. And, regrettably, I must admit that I listen to a lot of pop stuff like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, etc....although most of that I listen to when I'm getting ready to go out partying.
All in all, even just day to day, I *need* music. If I'm not doing something like watching a movie or TV, I need some kind of music going on in the background.
If there were one thing you could change about Adobe Illustrator what would it be?Well, I was going to say that they really, really, really needed to upgrade the type engine...but they did that in the CS version they just released. They also added the ability to do some basic 3D, including wire frames, which is going to have an infinite amount of uses now. I always hated the fact that you had to know some form of 3D or know someone who did to be able to add some nice, completely useless, 3D wire frame elements to your images, now I can I create my very own completely useless wire frame elements.
How did you come up with the name "The Flattest Cat?"Eheh... I had a feeling this question was going to come up. It's actually quite stupid...and everyone reading this will probably think I'm some kind of sadistic freak or something, but here it goes.
Probably back about 2 years before W.K. Lang's Soopa Famous article (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/soopa/), around the time I was just starting to learn how to code my own web pages I was looking for some sort of handle or whatever. I was cruising around the web and found this random quote generator and one of the quotes was "The more you run over a dead cat the flatter it gets". I'm not sure if I was just in one of my super bizarre moods or what, but I found the completely sadistic nature of the quote absolutely friggin' hilarious. I ended up using it as my tagline in just about all my images for the longest time and Sigurd (ziggen.com) actually had it on his site for some random quote generator thing for a while too, just before he hooked up with the lockjaw group.
What is your favorite all time movie and why?You're going to have to settle for the top 6 because I can't choose one of these over another...so in no particular order: Waking Life, Fight Club, Donnie Darko, Requiem for a Dream, Memento, and American Beauty.
How do you find working with clients as opposed to personal work? Well, since I started at Ramp Interactive I haven't had to deal with too many clients directly. Since we're a development firm geared towards the sport and entertainment industries I get a lot of creative freedom with the sites we do, which is awesome. As far as freelance stuff not related to Ramp, I had my fair share of visionless clients when I was doing web design in high school, which actually almost turned me away from design. I really love doing personal work, but I never seem to take the time out to do it, or I always put it aside for other stuff. As far as personal web sites, I never instigate the proper deadlines or restrictions on myself, so I always end up unhappy with my website(s) two or three months down the line.
Do you have any new projects coming up that you can tell us about?I have some more experimental stuff coming up that I'm going to be launching with a new site design for theflattestcat.com in-line with the May 1st Reboot. Next to that revamp I always have stuff coming out of Ramp Interactive that you can find out about at the Synapse section of theflattestcat.com, I'm also on the executive board for the Edmonton Adobe User Group, so we should hopefully have some cool stuff coming out of that in the next little while too.
We really appreciate you taking the time to do this interview, any last comment you would like to add?Just to thank you for this exposure/opportunity.
David Ronnie
10404-104 Ave.
Edmonton, AB
T5J 5G5
T. 1.780.951.4312
E. dave@rampinteractive.com
W. www.theflattestcat.com
| Passion | feeling | realism |
