CSS Design Awards Interview : Life As A Freelancer
L’équipe du site CSS Design Awards qui récompense chaque jour un nouveau site web pour sous la mention WOTH (Website Of The Day), réalise régulièrement des interviews d’artisans du Web à travers le monde et aux domains de compétences variées.
À l'occasion de leur neuvième dossier d’interviews, ils m’ont demandé de répondre à quelques une de leurs questions et de raconter comment je suis devenu Design Freelance et de quoi sont rythmées mes journées. Vous pouvez retrouver l’ensemble de cette interview dans leur dernier dossier Design Stories intitulé : # 9: Life As A Freelancer.
Interview publiée le 26 aout 2015 :
As far as I can remember, I always wanted to have a creative profession. A profession related to the general public. At the end of high school I spent quite a lot of time studying post video production, but eventually I opted for graduate studies in visual communication.
My years at the School Brassart allowed me to develop my sensitivity to design. Brassart's training was very oriented to "print" issues but I soon felt the need to actually interact with the public. It is at that moment that I became interested in web design. After my studies, I worked for 3 years in a web agency where I learned a lot from the teams around me.
I began to build strong relationships with my colleagues and the idea to become a freelancer matured. In 2013, I decided to quit my job to create Creativepark and take the time to expand my skills and experience what it would be like to work alone.
From my experience working as a freelancer I have learned to manage and handle my customer relationships, to lead projects and to have a global vision for my work.
I am fortunate to work every day surrounded by three other freelancers: Arnaud Briand, an SEO expert; Franck Letrouve, an expert on digital accessibility; and Matthew Beurel, a front-end & back-end developer. My relationship with them is essential and co-operation with them is on a regular basis.
One of the real pleasures when you are freelance is directly interacting with customers, employees and designers all over the world. It's a real comfort to be able to take time to reflect on the best UX design practices and to work out the details, such as the animations with developers.
Over time I specialized in user interfaces, web applications and back-office. Today, several desires of collaboration excite me. I hope to work in the coming months with top Paris-based agencies such as "Werkstatt" and "84 Paris" among others, with whom I have started building relationships.
A typical day for me begins with starting my Macbook, then launching Gmail and Skype. I check any new messages and then I switch on to Pinterest. I start my morning by analyzing the trends for 30-45 minutes and the creations of other designers via Dribbble, Behance, From up North, Blog du Webdesigner, The Dieline etc. I stock the best inspirations and resources used on Pinterest. This long and meticulous work has been rewarded through the growth of followers to my account, now over 100K.
I use very few tools, Skype to keep in touch with my essential various collaborators, Photoshop and Illustrator for creative issues and Dropbox to store & share projects. Outside of work, I like working on parallel projects, and experimenting with new ideas for future interfaces and interactions. I also study HTML, CSS, & JS.
I take advantage of my free time to produce and mix Dubstep and Drum&Bass music.
