Crème de la Crème

There are few graphic designers / web developers who stand out above the rest in terms of style, concept and general approach to the art of contemporary web design. I believe that to be a ‘web designer’ or a ‘graphic designer’ requires more than making designs for clients; and that the lifestyle of a modern day web developer has the potential to offer a different lifestyle approach: one which rewards those who give back to the art. There are always a few people in any field that stand out above the rest in terms of intelligent implementation of their efforts, and as is natural those persistent individuals have risen to become role models for others (like myself here at domeprojects.com) who strive for success in the graphic design world.

So far, though I’ve spent all week exploring, I have stuck with my original pick of four outstanding individuals, all of whom I think are great role models for anyone in our line of work. I’ll tell you what specifically stood out in my mind for each, but in no particular order I present: Soh Tanaka, Nick La, Fabio Sasso and Veerle. All of these designers have taken what started as a singular graphic designer, making their way in the wide world; to international voices in the design community. Each of these designers have taken their individual web presence and added several avenues – this not only increased exposure, but actually epitomizes a ‘right way’ to utilize the web as a tool, rather than more noise (exemplified by countless millions of websites.)

These designers have taken the art and shown what can be accomplished through hard work, persistence and thoughtful reduction. The internet is an inherently endless rabbit hole, every square pixel has almost infinite possibilities, and every solution brings a million new issues into focus. The art of web design and digital design then becomes a factor of creative simplicity and clear messaging. It’s easy to get lost in the countless possibilities, and fall short of success with a website; it’s good to know some people have been able to figure out methods for success. Let’s have a look at how these four have made international names for themselves.

Soh Tanaka Los Angeles
Creator of Design Bombs, a beautiful gallery built in WordPress and featured on the domeprojects.com blog roll, Soh Tanaka is a man of many talents. Soh’s personal and professional image is wrapped up as one, his website www.sohtanaka.com is a clean and professional presentation of his web design approach, self proclaimed as “the art of hand coding.” Along with running these two domains Soh is a freelance writer for http://designm.ag/, a community for designers. Soh has leveraged his creative weight through these different creative outlets. Offering the design community an inspirational gallery, edited through the eye of Soh, gives back to the community and allows others to be presented and inspired through Design Bomb’s clear and simple gallery approach. Another personal project, West Coast Poppin, presents more of Soh’s creative side, while expressing his passion for the art of poppin’ and lockin’. Since the project is such a personal passion, and because it is not design related ‘per se,’ this website is dedicated to this element of Soh’s world – giving more weight to his status as a creative designer, while separating this market from his corporate one.

Soh’s personal / professional site presents particular elements of Soh’s design personality and how they translate into beautiful corporate and professional website designs. Soh’s use of jQuery and css are clean and standards complaint. Soh keeps his content fresh with regular blog posts on clean hand coding techniques and client work, while including a personal touch with straightforward reporting on his work flow and project development interactions, making for a good example of a professional web developer’s blog. Soh drives traffic to his site with tutorials and inspirational anecdotes on being a web designer and developing the skills it takes to do that successfully.

Nick La Toronto
If you type the letters ‘nickla’, no spaces, no www, no .com, into the url window of any browser you will be redirected to www.ndesign-studio.com the main site for the Vancouver based graphic and web designer Nick La. The site you will be looking at is one of the top illustrator / designers in the world. I have been a big fan of Nick’s work for the past 3 years now, his last site design was a big inspiration for the Joomla theme I created called PGD in 2008. His current design at his main site www.ndesign-studio.com, portrays all the best qualities of a professional, standards compliant web developer. Like Soh Tanaka, Nick La has branched out from one marketing webpage, to several distinct avenues with his web presence. His list of website credits include: N.Design Studio, Web Designer Wall, Design Jobs on the Wall, and Best Web Gallery.

Each of Nick’s projects display a side of his creative personality, from the light clean illustrative fashion of N.Design Studio, to the dark and slick look of Best Web Gallery, Nick shows versatility in design approach as well as the ability to cater to the style of message. He also develops with jQuery and standards compliant css / html, making for a clean look with progressive enhancement. It’s Nick’s illustrative work that really makes him stand apart, but along with his talents as a designer, Nick has become a great teacher, he gives his knowledge to the community through excellent tutorials. Nick’s tutorials and illustrations have found their way all around the web, earning him respect and work, valuable commodities in the web design world. Nick is also a WordPress developer, and has begun offering workshops on WordPress development..

Fabio Sasso Brazil
If your a graphic designer you’ve seen tutorials by Abduzeedo, if you haven’t stop reading now and do a google search. The strong lighting and color effects of Abduzeedo tutorials make them a recognizable voice in the web tutorial realm, while the sheer quantity available make the work of Fabio Sasso a common fixture in countless graphic design tutorial resources. Fabio’s tutorials, under the name Abduzeedo, have been syndicated all over the web. Like the other designers mentioned here Fabio has branched out and formed several websites to serve the different roles of being a successful graphic / web designer. Abduzeedo is a tutorial and inspirational online ‘zine’, though now there is a growing number of contributors, Fabio started the site when his computer and backups were stolen several years back as a way to back up his experiments – to this day he continues to produce quality blog posts on inspiration as well as beautiful tutorials.

Besides Abduzeedo, Fabio contributes to PSDtuts and runs a successful graphic design company in Brazil called Zee. (Which is part of the name Abduzeedoo, an abstraction of the Portuguese word for ‘abducted’ combined with the name of his design company.) Like the others Fabio has managed to make a name for himself through the proliferation and syndication of his tutorials as well as the success of Abduzeedo. His business website Zee is an example of simplicity and clarity in professional website design, while his tutorials exhibit artistic creativity. Fabio’s personal site is a great example of using proprietary systems and integrating them to serve a purpose. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Fabio has done a brilliant job of creating a super simple and clean site (basically a feeder) for his various social networking accounts. There are no pages, and no navigation … but why should there be? The art of ‘clean’ is a difficult one to master, but with it come the blessing of beautiful simplicity. Check out Fabio’s personal site at www.fabiosasso.com.

Veerle Pieters Belgium
Last but certainly not least on my list is Veerle Pieters a European designer / developer currently based out of Belgium. Veerle’s Blog, as it is so simply titled, gives a hint as to the extent of Veerle’s personal market position. Veerle’s tutorials are copious, ample and beautiful. Like the others Veerle’s tutorials are syndicated throughout the web, and are often stumbled upon through google searches for vector design and photoshop design tutorials. Inspired by the Zen Garden and the work of Douglass Bowman, Veerle’s style is clean and neat, with an essence of ‘busy,’ but not in any bad sense of the word. Her tutorials and well written, with great images and clean code examples. Like the others Veerle’s Blog is a professional voice, and with over 1500 posts it has become a go to resources for thousands of designers all over the world.

Veerle teamed up with business partner Geert Leyseele back in 2000 to form Duoh, a web design company to handle the workload of clients. The blog continues to grow, as does the portfolio of Duoh, while Veerle continues to design for web. The Duoh blog focuses primarily on company news and featured portfolio pieces, while Veerle’s Blog caters to the design community, keeping her inspiration flowing, and her work progressing. The importance of multiple outputs can be seen in Verlee’s Blog, such talented designers as she do more for the art by offering tutorials and resources. And as for her success, having been declared 39th on a list of the Most Influential Female Bloggers is quite something for someone who started as a logo designer. Now, Veerle is still designing, writing tutorials and appearing in speaking panels for the graphic design field. Kevin from Abuzeedoo did an interview with Veerle about a year and a half ago, you can find out more about her reading Interview: Veerle Pieters.