To find a career to which you are adapted by nature, and then to work hard at it, is about as near to a formula for success and happiness as the world provides.

One of the fortunate aspects of this formula is that, granted the right career has been found, the hard work takes care of itself. Then hard work is not hard work at all.
– Mark Sullivan

I read these lines some time ago while surfing on the web, but since then they have been a great source of inspiration for me.

Hi! My name is Davy Kestens, a college student and freelance creative director by profession. At the moment, my focus is set at creating online businesses. I often hear people calling me crazy (I can live with that), original (Aah, I love it), and an absolute Mac-loving maniac with a smile… I just like to call myself an open-minded guy who loves to travel.

Starting Out as a Web Designer

When we start our career as web designers, we are taught certain principles such as:

• Design shall provide ease of navigation.
• The design should have optimum balance between whitespace and content.
• Text should have good readability.
• The colors and graphics used on websites shall be an optimum blend and should highlight the most important elements.
• Design shall be fresh and pleasing to the eyes.
• The design shall not be too containerized and the page must flow from top to bottom in a smooth fashion.
• Images shall be smooth and soft rather than being in deep contrast.
• Align your design with client needs, because he is your livelihood.
• Know your tools – Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, etc.
• The list goes on…

These are basics and there are ample literature out there that can teach and train us on these aspects (Smashing Magazine, Tuts+, A List Apart). Now, I’d like to ask you the following two questions.

How do you keep up? How can you stay creative and on top of your field?

Over the previous years, I have learned the number one way to improve myself and produce some amazing designs. That unique way is to design, develop, market and maintain your very own project. This project can be anything from creating your own blog, building a community about your hobby, or even coming up with the next Facebook.

Designing and maintaining your own project is a time-consuming and very tiring exercise, especially when you already work lots of hours. But success doesn’t come easy. If you create your own online project about a subject that you are deeply interested in, it brings along a degree of accuracy and passion in the design, which is hard to get while working on most client projects.

Importance of a Personal Project

I am going to share some of my thoughts on why I believe it’s important for each web designer to design and maintain their own blog, community or next million dollar idea!

1. Responsibility vs. Ownership
   It is my belief that web designers are the key to the success of a website. Each website only has a few seconds to attract its visitors; and that is only feasible with a great design. When working on a client’s project, you do not have complete control of the project. But when you are your own client, the whole responsibility of design solely falls on you. This sense of ownership gives you freedom, which propels you to explore the newest trends and heights on the web.



2. Freshness and Craziness
   Web designers simply love to create fresh designs. But how many crazy ideas can you implement in a client’s design? May be 20% or 30% at most? And how many crazy ideas can you implement on your own website? 100%! You can go crazy and shape your online baby in however way you desire. You can also include all the ideas that you have always wanted to experiment with in your designs. Your own website is a platform for you to test your ideas and eventually, you can show your clients that your ideas actually work!

3. Unleash Your Creativity
   Each website design requires creativity. When working on a client’s project, creativity often gets hampered by ideas coming from the unaware client. When you are working for yourself, you can completely choose what colors and graphics will work best and what type of content your site will need. You will surely be able to create the most creative design in such a situation.
4. Time Limitations vs. Experimentation
   While working on a client’s project, there is usually a deadline which needs to be met. However, when working for yourself, you have flexibility to stretch your time because you want the best for your baby. This gives you all the time to experiment, browse through the web searching for ideas, and learn the current trends on the web.
   
5. Going Beyond Limits
   Usually a human is limited by his or her personal knowledge. While employed, you are usually bound by your company’s training process and resources. On the contrary, when you work for yourself, you can gather all required resources and work through the latest tools. With that, you can push your limits to levels way beyond where you are right now.
6. Open Feedback and Criticism
   While working on a client’s project, there is typically a limited peer-group from where you can get direct open feedback on the design. That peer group includes the client, your team members, and – if you’re not a freelancer – your managers. However, when you design your project, you are not bound by the same constraints and you are able to show anyone. You can even go on Dribbble and get feedback from the world’s best designers.



7. Design Principles
   Above all, you will be able to apply all of the design principles that you have learned to your project. When designing for clients, there are times when they have no regard for design principles and would rather make the whole website fit above the fold. When designing your project, you have the freedom to create a website that will be aesthetically pleasing to everyone because you have no constraints when designing the websites.

My Personal Project

At this stage, few of my dear readers might be thinking that it is easier said than done. Well, let me just say that I practice what I preach. Yes! My latest website, my child, my heart, my beauty is www.runaddicts.net. For me, this is my proud trophy.

Running is something I love to do. Through RunAddicts, I have tried to implement all the points that I shared above. I have learned a ton, experienced freedom, as well as the thrill of going completely crazy when my project launched.

All the web designers who have implemented my suggestion and have worked frequently on their own projects observed that their design quality at work improved considerably; and so did their responsibility. Many of them have reported growth and increased their satisfaction in their career.

Thus, I recommend to all you web designers – you must start by creating your own project as soon as possible. Whether it’s a blog, a million dollar idea, or even a community about stargazing. It doesn’t even matter if you finish it, as long as you keep working on it, and trying out these new techniques, you’ll do great!

I sincerely hope that you too will gain from my experience and grow leaps and bounds in your designs. If you enjoyed this article, please help us share it with others. Also, you should follow us on Twitter here.

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But wait! "Houston, we have a problem!" You have launched your design application (insert your app of choice) and nothing is happening. You have one hand on your mouse and another waiting for you to enter some key strokes to make the magic happen. But, guess what? Your mind is a void. And the harder you attempt to mine one nugget of creative gold, the more it would seem to elude you. And, before you know it, a couple of hours have passed and all you have to show for it is an open application with a saved file name.

Now, If you are one of those individuals who can sit at your desk, fire up an Adobe Creative Suite product and start working, I am both envious and am in awe of your aptitude. But, whenever I try this feat of dexterous skill, I end up gazing at my monitor telepathically willing something to happen. I simply think I am not wired for this type of production. As a designer, I cannot begin to conceive of a piece of work until I have spent some time sketching out ideas.

Don’t force creativity. Allow it to come to you.

I find that one of the benefits of sketching out my ideas is that I am not forcing my brain to come up with something tantalizing from the onset. I have always felt that designing is a process of trial and error. With a piece of paper and a pencil, I can, in a free form manner, just let the ideas come to me.

I will scribble them down. I will cross them out. I will scribble some more. I allow the process to organically ebb and flow and, at some point, I will stumble upon a concept that I would like to further investigate.

This relieves the undue pressure on myself "to produce" which will adversely affect the end product and also waste valuable time. Tara Roskell, a freelance designer, put it best on her post.⁽¹⁾

By spending a short time sketching you can save yourself hours on the computer. Not only will you save yourself hours, you may even afford yourself some peace of mind. Whenever that evil monster of ‘designer’s block’⁽²⁾ creeps in, it inevitably leaves a path of destructive self doubt in its wake. I challenge you to start employing sketching as a part of your process and you will see a dramatic decrease in the amount of times you hit that virtual wall of nothingness.

Sketching can make you a more efficient designer.

By attempting to digitally design something before sketching, I am essentially forcing my hand. The computer only allows me the ability to work on one concept at a time (unless I miraculously grow three more sets of arms and hands). I find it to be more efficient to play around with ideas and solutions on paper first. This way I am avoiding the pitfalls of potentially losing focus or muddying the waters of a particular project. Since we have tasked ourselves with the duties of intelligently and shrewdly communicating a message through art, isn’t it a better idea to properly conceptualize that message before adding all of the pretty pixels?

I would argue that this applies to whatever you are designing. If you are laying out a web page, aren’t you doing yourself a disservice by not sketching out the layout of the page first? Your first idea may actually be your weakest and if you have committed yourself to a digital version, you have just spent some time working on something that is not useful. The same holds true for print and logo work.

My talent for drawing is limited to stick figures.

I’ve seen this as a reason for skipping the sketching process lately and I am here to say that, if this applies to you, you may want to rethink this. The process is not intended for you to create a detailed sketch like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man⁽³⁾ every time you put pencil to paper. In fact, if you ever get the chance to view some of da Vinci’s other sketches, you will see they are dominated by endless explorations. That is what the process will help you do. Explore ideas, layouts and shapes before committing to any one motif. Don’t worry if you are not knocking yourself dead with your drawing skills. This is not a drawing contest. The sketches are for you only. Nothing more. Nothing less. So, whether you have taken art and anatomy classes or you can barely draw a perfect ellipse, it simply doesn’t matter. The goal is the exploration, not the journey.

Make it a part of your routine.

Only out of habit will this be beneficial to you. I swear by my Moleskine⁽⁴⁾ notebook and various other sketch pads I have accumulated over the years. I keep one in a bag that I take with me wherever I go. There are also stacks of old ones that I like to thumb through from time to time to find unused ideas and inspiration.

Start with your next project. Before you go anywhere near your computer, sit down with a piece of paper and a writing utensil (preferably a pencil) and see what happens. Do it for as long as you feel comfortable, either in silence or with your favorite playlist blaring in the background. Take a break from it and come back to your sketches with fresh eyes. You may find a diamond in the rough you never knew existed.

Footnotes

1. ↑Tara Roskell: Sketches and Grids Speed up the Design Process
2. ↑Josh Medrano: Your Creative Drive
3. ↑Wikipedia: Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man
4. ↑(pron. mol-a-skeen’-a) is a brand of notebooks, planners, diaries, sketchbooks and albums.

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Speaking About Startups

Envato has emerged as one of the most exciting companies in the creative world. Can you please give us a brief history of your startup?

Envato started out about four years ago initially to build a marketplace for Adobe Flash files. Back then we were called FlashDen which was the name of that marketplace and really that was the whole plan – to build one site.

But as soon as we launched the site, we began planning more marketplaces. Because we had to wait a long time before we had the resources to make another marketplace, I found myself with enough time to also start some side projects. After I got into blogging we launched first FreelanceSwitch and then later Psdtuts+ which quickly took on a life of their own. Fast forward to today and we’ve grown from one marketplace to six, one tutorial site to eight and launched a lot of other sites on the way!

I remember when Psdtuts+ was just a tutorial blog. What made you decide to finally start Envato, which back then was called Eden?

Ah yes, we’ve had many name changes! After we launched our second site it was clear that "FlashDen" wouldn’t work as the company name, so we changed to "Eden Creative Communities" before realizing that to trademark something like ‘eden’ is really, really difficult. So we changed the name to something completely made up – Envato. Because it’s not a real word, no-one else uses it and trademarking is much easier!

How many hours did you work when your company first started?

Many! Too Many! When we first started out my wife Cyan and I were freelancing to pay our bills. So in the daytime we would work our freelance jobs and then at night and on the weekends we’d work on FlashDen. It was very hard work and I remember going literally months without a day off from long, double days. But it all paid off because the hard work meant we didn’t need to borrow or take investors and that’s given us a lot more freedom now!

How did you keep yourself motivated when you first started?

Good question! It was quite difficult, especially just before launch when it wasn’t at all clear that the site was going to be successful or even that we’d finish it, and we were pretty far in debt from paying for everything, and exhausted from all the work. I think we just focused on one thing at a time. So first it was just focusing on launching the site (somehow), and then we focused on somehow getting people to visit the site, and then we focused just on making enough to pay for the day to day operations, and so on.

If you think about everything all together it’s a bit too daunting, but if you just keep focused on one or two steps ahead with just a broad overview of where you are going, then it’s easier to stay motivated because one or two steps sounds possible while a big journey might sound too hard.

Did you base your business model and principles after another successful startup, or did you create everything yourself?

Our first marketplace FlashDen was influenced largely by iStockPhoto, Dreamstime and other stock photo marketplaces. iStock actually lets you sell Adobe Flash, but they did (and still do) a pretty poor job of it, so we focused on doing it all better for Flash designers and developers.

How did you avoid the mistakes of many other dot-coms? Most of these companies grew tremendously in the beginning and they are nowhere to be found today.

I think focusing on building a good product as cheaply as possible without taking a lot of investment was probably the key. Those early dot-coms used to have to take tons of money from investors to do anything – in part because the internet was a lot more expensive back then in terms of bandwidth, expertise and so on. For us we benefited from the internet’s maturation both in terms of development and in audience. So we could build cheaply and then just work hard and wait for revenues to start building before we invested more.

What would you say is your companies motto? If you don’t have one, how would you spell your company’s success in one sentence.

We’re successful because of our community of authors, readers, reviewers, staff and users.

You have given a lot to the community since you started out. (Free resources, tutorials, as well as organizing Blog Action Day.) Can you tell us about the importance of giving back to the community?

I think one of the most important trends we see in the world today is that there is a slowly developing consciousness that we are all part of one, connected, human family. This has many big implications in the world, but also many small ones such as the one you mentioned – that it’s important to give back to the community. If you realize that people are all interconnected then it makes sense that you’d want to share and give back to each other, just as you have a natural instinct to take care of yourself. Giving back to the community can come in many forms.

It is important for a company to do these things:

• Take care of their staff.
• Produce great products to give value to their users.
• Look for ways to use their resources for the greater good.

When creating a web startup, do you think it is important that you are a good developer, or is it okay to outsource the development of your website to somebody else?

I think being a web designer or developer is a great benefit – particularly in terms of saving money – but certainly you can start a web startup in many different ways and outsourcing or hiring a developer has worked for many, many companies.

I noticed that even though Envato has grown by leaps and bounds, you still manage to be very involved in the little things of your websites. I still see you make announcements, write posts, as well as design some of the sites, such as WorkAwesome, which looks very nice. Do you think that it is good for the owner to be involved in all of the little things?

I think it’s great to be involved though I’m finding it harder and harder the bigger we grow. I think one of the big challenges for entrepreneurs is giving up their involvement in everything and realizing that you have to let go of some things. Still it’s also important to have you ear to the ground and know what’s happening and that often means being involved on a low level – at least some of the time!

Do you think that co-founders are a good idea, or would you rather start a company by yourself?

I think having co-founders is an excellent idea and I would certainly never start a company without them. They bring many benefits including skills you might not have, energy when you are feeling unmotivated, manpower when you need a lot of things to happen with little resources, ideas that you might not have had and generally more resources and contacts that you wouldn’t have alone.

Do you keep track of what your competitors are doing? If so, what do you do with that information?

Oh yes, I always keep an eye on our various competitors largely to get ideas and be inspired. It’s always motivating having someone great in the same field because they help you be better. You think about Tennis for example with Roger Federer out there, if anyone wants to beat him they have to push themselves that much harder and do that much better to beat him. He lifts everyone’s game by being so great. In the same way having good competitors means you have to lift your game to keep pace or to stay ahead.

How did you make your business model scalable?

I think it’s important in any business to be always thinking about how to grow the business.

For me I always tell myself if I want to do all the things that I want to do, then I need to find a way to make the business run without me as much as possible. Focusing on that (removing yourself from the equation) is a good way to make a business scalable because often times the founders are one of the most limiting factors – after all there’s only one of me and one of each of my co-founders.

I think the other important thing is to think about how a successful idea can be applied to other areas. For example when Psdtuts+ was successful we started thinking "hey let’s teach other stuff in the same format!" and so we started other Tuts+ sites!

Can you share with us some resources that helped your startup to get where it is today?

I think books are a great resource for entrepreneurs and a couple I’d highly recommend reading are "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki and "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. There are so, so many other great books though, and I can’t recommend enough reading lots and lots!

Are there any final words of advice that you have to those who are contemplating on a startup?

The advice I always give to new entrepreneurs is to just get started, but start with something small and manageable. Don’t necessarily try to take on the whole world all at once. There will always be time to evolve and grow your vision, it’s better to focus on getting something going first.

Build something, get it earning some money, grow it, then improve, then grow some more. Iterating a business means you acknowledge that it might not be perfect the first time around, but that you will keep working on it until you can get it perfect in the future!

Thanks again Collis for answering these questions for the Design Informer readers. Your startup has been a real inspiration to me and I’m sure that it has really inspired others as well. If you want to check out the entire Envato lineup of websites, go ahead and check out their company website. Also, if you are looking for more excellent articles about startups and business, Collis has an excellent blog with practical and useful advice called The Netsetter.

I hope you enjoyed this interview. There are more excellent interviews coming up in the future and there is one in particular that you won’t want to miss so go ahead and subscribe to the RSS feed. Please share your thoughts about the interview below and give us some feedback. Thank you!

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Kiss – Keep It Simple Stupid

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Note: The wallpaper only comes in one size. If you’d like to use it as your desktop wallpaper, please set it as your background and set your background color to either black or white depending on which wallpaper you want.

About the Quote and the Wallpaper

Earlier today, I tweeted a message asking all of my followers about which daily design did they like the best? Out of all the replies, this design got the most compliments. Also, one of my followers suggested that I offer it as a wallpaper which was an excellent idea.

If you are a designer, I’m sure you have heard of this quote. This is one of my favorite design quotes and I always try to apply in when I design. Sure, there are definitely times when my designs are complicated and busy, but really, the designs that I enjoy the most are the ones that are simple and straight to the point. To me, they are the most effective as well. That’s why I really like the work of Simon Page.

Also, I definitely applied this quote when doing the redesign of this blog. I stripped away most of the design elements that were unecessary and I tried to make the blog as simple as possible without being bland and boring. You can read more about my redesign process here. Anyway, my suggestion to you designers is this.

Keep it simple, stupid!

Quick Summary

• Estimated time: 20 minutes
• Tools: Photoshop
• Total Layers Used: 4 (KISS)

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