I’ve gotten to know Liam McKay of Function through the web over the last couple of months, and I’m always impressed with him. He is a designer that is constantly growing and improving. Every design he creates seems to top the one prior. That’s impressive; and it’s something I always strive for in my own work.
I’m stoked Liam agreed to this interview. Check out his responses below, enjoy!
First off, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions for MyInkBlog readers! Tell us a little about your background; where your from and how you got started in design?
Hey, thanks for the opportunity appreciate being asked! I’m from a small city in the middle of England called Coventry, I’ve always been interested in all things design related. Art was always my favourite subject at school as it was more hands on and practical, and from an early age I knew I wanted to do something related to art.
I’d always been familiar with Photoshop as it’s a tool my dad had on his PC, so I’d always play around with it and grew to do more and more until I was making (some very bad) websites. After school I decided to go to College and study Multimedia for two years. It was there where I really decided I wanted to be a Web Designer.
A lot of your newer projects are centered around WordPress themes. What is the big draw of this blogging platform? What are the advantages and disadvantages in comparison to some of the other major alternatives?
WordPress has always been something I wanted to get involved in. The first CMS I’d used was Mambo (now Joomla) which I learned to make my own themes for, but I would always come across WordPress powered sites, and was impressed with them. It was hard to ignore the growing presence of WordPress in the web world. So when it came to building function I decided it was time to properly explore WordPress. A decision that has proved since to be the right one for me, and I now love it.
Your designs are always original and brilliant, where do you get most of your inspiration from?
My ways of getting inspired always change. I’m always interested in looking at other methods of design, I love watching motion graphics, and browsing digital art. And a lot of this work is successful because the artists tend to be very experimental and explore with different styles, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But you always take things away from experimenting, so even if it doesn’t work out it’s not been a waste of time. For more traditional inspiration I always look for quality sites and two of my all time favourites are Best Web Gallery and Pattern Tap as the quality of work on these are always top notch.
As a designer it can be nearly impossible to balance all the tasks that you want to accomplish at once. How do you try to do it? What does your typical day look like?
Again, I never really have a set method or way of dealing with things, but I try and keep on top of tasks by getting them sorted as soon as possible, for example answering emails as they come in, keeping record of invoices and payments as soon as they come in, that way you never have to ask yourself “have I sent that yet?” – A bit like when you get homework in and you do it on the first night rather than leaving it to the last day :)
As for a typical day, I tend to work quite late – I get up in the morning and get myself a nice mug of coffee, then catch up on my RSS feeds, twitter and emails. Then I have to take my sister to work, so I tend not to start any design work until after I’m back. But once I’m back I pretty much work from midday to midnight. Obviously I take breaks and eat! And this allows for the occasional TV viewing and XBOX360 Session! But I spend most of the day at my desk, working on client work or personal projects and experiments.
Other than Adobe Suite and the internet, what software, hardware, books, etc make your design jobs much easier to accomplish?
FreshBooks is really the only app I use, everything else I either write down, or record using OpenOffice for spreadsheets etc. I’m really not one for books, I can honestly say I’ve never read a full book in my life, I just don’t have the patience. But I do enjoy reading blogs, and I really do thing that reading blogs helps me get through and keeps me inspired and focused on my job. I’ve learned a lot, especially in the last few months and it’s all from various websites and blogs. I have a graphics tablet which I use from time to time, I really love it but don’t use it as much as I want to, but when I do use it it is a real life saver and time saver!
Which technologies are you not proficient at; that you’d like to improve on?
Well, I really got into XHTML and CSS at my last job, I’m not amazing, but I think it wouldn’t take too much work for me to perfect it, and I’ve learned a lot from working with my Developer at function, Spencer. But really I’d like to get more involved in the development side of things, as at the moment I focus purely on design. And while I’m now familiar with WordPress I’ve yet to design and code a full theme myself, but I’m hoping at some point this year I’m going to change all that!
What’s the best advice someone has given you?
I remember reading an article long before I decided to go freelance which basically focused on the idea that if you know you can make something work, it doesn’t matter what other people say. I was really in two minds as whether or not to go freelance, I was in a okay job which paid well for me at the time, but I just didn’t feel I was being able to do work that I was proud of. But there seemed to be too many complications and worries involved in going freelance, and a lot of people advised against it. It was frustrating, because I knew I could make it work, I had so many ideas, but I put it off for a long time. But after reading the article I finally decided that yes it’s not going to be easy, but I knew I had the dedication to make it work. I wish I knew the link to the article as that would be great here, but I don’t sorry!
Mac or a PC, why?
Mac! I’d been growing tired of my PC for some time. I’ve always used a PC, but I would always have problems, especially with viruses. And your PC crashing when you’re working on design work is the last thing you need. And only the other day I decided it was time to make the move to Mac, so I’ve only have a Mac for about 3 days now – But as soon as I got it home and started it up, it just felt right, and straight away felt like it was money well spent.
It’s early days, so I don’t want to say too much, but I can see why Mac’s are growing in popularity. And I used to be a bit of a Apple hater, but I’ve now got myself a iPhone and a iMac, which is a big change from a couple of years ago when I had a Zune and a PC. I think I’m more happy with my apple stuff!
When you’re not behind the computer designing and blogging, what do you enjoy doing to get away from it all?
Well, I’m only 19, so I’m still very much into enjoying myself. I like to try and keep the weekends free from design work if possible. I have a great bunch of friends who I love spending time with, so I try to spend as much time as I can with them. I really like driving and road trips, and having friends spread all over the country at university it means I get a chance to go on quite a few road trips and spend weekends in all sorts of places. Something I want to do more of I think! Other than that I quite enjoy playing games, although they have to be quite realistic games, I don’t like games with monsters and aliens, I much prefer more “real life” situations, GTA4 and sports games etc. Yeah I’m a little weird like that.
What are your biggest struggles when designing for a client?
I think the main thing I worry about when working for a client is that time where you send off the designs and are waiting for feedback. I get really restless at that point, checking my email every 4 seconds. It plays on my mind a lot. Thankfully people generally have great things to say, but I can never get used to that feeling when you first send your ideas over!
What blogs/websites have you been reading the most lately?
Usability Post is a site I’ve been reading a lot of recently. I think that Dmitry is a wise and talented guy and I love reading his tips and pointers on usability. One of my true favourites of the moment.
Design Shard. I’ve loved watching Max build up his blog, and go through a stunning redesign. His posts really are a real joy to go through. And I urge everyone to stick his site in your RSS reader.
We Are Not Freelancers. I’m really interested in what these guys are up to at the moment and I check them out as often as I can. And I find their recent project, From The Couch quite interesting. They’re great guys and I look forward to seeing more from them.
There’s a bunch more blogs, you can see some of my top picks here. And you’ll find MyInkBlog there of course!
What projects are you working on right now? What’s in the works for Function?
We’re actually looking on building up a network of sites. But we’re not rushing into anything just yet. We have some ideas, and even a cool program / app that we will be launching in the coming weeks hopefully. But right now our main focus really is on our client work and keeping the blog going as much as we can on the side.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, It’s been a pleasure, I always enjoy speaking to you and reading what you have to say, so keep up the hard work and I hope your readers enjoyed this little insight!
Have a question for Liam or MyInkBlog? Drop us a comment below.
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November 17, 2008
Cool stuff Andrew and Liam, really enjoyable read, i still have a zune! , the cliff hanger at the end sounds a bit intrigueing , have to wait for that one.
Liam produces some excellent and its always good to see what hes producing and contributing. all the best, thanks for having a read of design shard from time to time aswell.
Max´s last post was… Design blogs with Flickr Groups everyone come share your work
November 17, 2008
Oh what could be your “network of sites?” Now you’ve got me interested!
Great interview, and I’ve always been impressed with Liam’s work.
Brian´s last post was… An Interview with Liam McKay of Function
November 17, 2008
Liam is the man! It’s always a pleasure collaborating with him on projects.
Pasquale´s last post was… Free character pack for all!
November 18, 2008
Hey Liam,
Nice interview mate. I must say thank you for mentioning From-the-Couch and We Are not Freelancers.
Massive respect for that.
November 18, 2008
Glad to hear that Liam is finding Pattern Tap so useful. We’ve enjoyed creating it, and using it ourselves at Squared Eye! Great interview. Interesting to see the similarities and differences in designers and their techniques.
November 18, 2008
19? Geeze, I have a lot of catching up to do ; ) You’re brilliant, Liam! I especially liked the part about driving your sister to work. My brother is my roommate, and I would be really into the idea of him giving me a lift to work every day!
Thanks for the FreshBooks mention. We’re happy to have you on board!
November 18, 2008
Nice insight, Liam. As Brian mentions, I’m also interested in this network of sites. Ciao for now.
November 18, 2008
Hey guys, thanks for the kind words, means a lot.
As for the network of sites, really we’re just looking to expand the number of sites we run, but as I said we’d rather take our time with it and concentrate on client work for now. This could all change of course in time, but at the moment it is something we’re putting a lot of thought into.
liam´s last post was… Stunning Free Character Pack: Free Illustrations for any use
November 18, 2008
hi, Andrew, I’ve translated this post into Chinese and posted it on my blog. This interview is very inspiring to me. I keeped the permant link to your site. Hope you don’t mind. You guys are great! Wish i can do some kind of my design someday.
November 19, 2008
I read this earlier but only just had time to leave a comment. Really great interview, I’m a huge fan of Liam’s work, his WP designs are amazing. Thanks for posting.
Tom Ross´s last post was… Daily Image Inspiration #17
November 20, 2008
Thanks for the interview Andrew and Liam. Function is one of the blogs I follow closely and Liam never fails to deliver!
Angie Bowen´s last post was… Wednesday Weekly Spotlight #17
December 3, 2008
This is very inspiring interview. I know this works for sure.