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Seven and a half questions for Simon Collison
Saturday April 23, 2005
Simon Collison, that's Colly to me and you, the man from Agenzia. Site reviewer at StyleGala, he doesn't need any real introduction from me that's for sure. So let's just get on and ask the questions.
Okay, I am probably the only person in the world who gets confused about it but Colly, how do you pronounce it? Is it Coli, is it Co-lee, or something completely different?
Hello John. Well, it rhymes with "Wally", which seems apt. I hadn't been called Colly for two decades before the Agenzia boys resurrected it. Most of my life I was "Collyflower", "Collydog" or "Collywobbles". "Colly" is much better. Just don't call me "Colin".
You say very little about your art background, can you tell us more about it and why you ultimately tired of the whole thing?
Bloody artists. I'll keep this brief because it's all behind me now. I studied art, and had some success as an artist. Around 1999 a couple of us set up an arts organisation called You Are Here (YAH) to promote art and artists in Nottingham. From that came an annual festival run by ten volunteers, masses of funding and excitement and all seemed good.
After three years of being a fresh, young organisation, certain artists (the untalented but egotistical ones) started to turn on us. Then the local newspaper front-paged us for displaying an artwork about suicide, and finally the galleries and arts orgs began to be difficult to deal with. We spoke our minds too much I think, and stuffy arts people hate that. In the end, the apathy of artists and the selfishness of the galleries got to me, and I resigned from it all, leaving YAH in the hands of people who still care. Nowadays I look for artistic inspiration in film, music and design. They seem more relevant and purposeful than gallery-based art to me now.
Like myself and countless others, you are a self-taught web designer, how did you go about getting yourself in a position where you could be taken seriously?
I have to thank Agenzia for bringing me under their wing back in 2002. Though we all hoped I'd have more time to learn and develop ideas, the weight of the workload meant my learning curve has been looping the loop constantly. They obviously thought I'd be a quick learner, as they only had the YAH site as reference, and I knew sod-all about CSS, XHTML or PHP - or blogging back then. Agenzia give me a great deal of autonomy, and trust me to approach projects my way, which is vital.
I read other blogs solidly for a year before starting CollyLogic in May 2004, so I kind of knew what would make a good impression in the community. I think link-ups from other blogs and CSS showcase sites are invaluable, and help establish a reputation almost overnight. The trick is to keep finding work, problems, solutions and do enough to stay on Malarkey's BritPack teamsheet. Mostly though, it's all down to those bloody ticked-off links.
First off congratulations on joining the StyleGala review team, secondly thanks for pimping my site (I guess I'll let you off all those ciggies of mine you smoked). But more importantly, when reviewing a site what are the key things you look for?
Yeah, I love doing the reviews. I obviously stick to the rules that David established, but I do have my own criteria also. The biggest thing for me is composition. For me, a design has to have balance. A thousand tricks, widgets, icons or drop-shadows are worthless without good composition. My eyes normally tell me instantly if a design is notable, and I follow up the first impression with a delve into how pixel-perfect the alignment and spacing is.
Basically, a site needs not only to toe the standards line, but also be fresh, well-composed and consistent, with a well thought-out colour palette, good navigation, and additionally some magic ingredient to set it apart from all the others. Careful text-spacing and legibility are also key. I always dive into the code and give it a thorough Web-developer toolbarring also.
Regrettably, most of the submissions don't even pass the first submission guideline. Probably 50% still don't seperate content from presentation, 40% rely on tables, 30% don't validate, 20% are pure Flash, and 10% are just plain ugly. Often a real gem is submitted, but won't get reviewed due to schoolboy errors such as cellpadding on tables or masses of unclosed image tags. They'll know who I'm talking about.
You seem to have so much in the pipeline right now that I'm not sure which project to ask you about, so of the up and coming gems what can you tell us about?
I've been very lucky over the past twelve months to work on sites for the Libertines, the incredible Jon Burgerman and the Project Facade team. Such jobs seem to spawn more of the same kind, so there will be more work for bands, art projects and creative industries. It's not all glamour though, as there will undoubtedly be many more government-funded quango sites to bash out, and even they are rewarding.
Most exciting is something I cannot yet mention, but will be a new website for an incredible group of UK illustrators and animators. As usual we'll probably get paid in stickers and t-shirts, but it'll be worth it.
What's been your top ten this month in iTunes?
This week I discovered The Duke Spirit, who make loud, ballsy rock and should be huge. Other than that I've been playing the Icelandic band Leaves' "Shakma" heavily, which is eight minutes of brooding beauty. What else? Loads of Interpol, Diplo's Florida album, DJ Shadow stuff, Bloc Party, Beck's Guero, Pink Grease, Queens Of The Stone Age and a hell of a lot of old Smiths albums. Was that ten?
I'm really lucky that we get lots of free CDs sent to our office thanks to our in-house musical arm Speakers Push The Air, so I get to hear loads of new music before selling it all on Ebay.
Of course we see most of your CSS favourites on StyleGala, so let's take a step outside of Web Standards and ask which designers/artists (of any "genre") are having an influence on you right now?
Hmm. Well, my colleague Jamie Craven is the best print designer I've ever met, so him definitely. If he ever gets around to building past his holding page he'll be huge. Outside of the office, I'd say illustrators like Kevin Cornell of Bearskinrug fame, Neasden Control Centre, Andrew Rae and Burgerman are all very inspiring. Film-wise I'm a sucker for stuff from Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, be it their films or music videos. One visual artist still amazes me, and that's the wonderful Olafur Eliasson. Infact, anything creative from Iceland inspires me. Those people are beyond intelligent.
Well, thank you for taking the time to answer the questions Colly, just the half to do. Where would you like...?
... to "lay some pipe"? Erm, never done it on a boat. That'd be nice.
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