The New Media Designer

The past
I wanted to be all sorts of very different things when I was small. I never had just one career in mind. The ones that have remained in my memory are the odd ones like missionary, ballerina and politician.

Getting started
I started working in the Internet because I was curious. I wanted to find out what it was really all about. That was back in 1995. At that time, the industry wasn’t even an industry – just a bunch of people using and pushing forward the new technology. I was interested in community and public art, and the Internet seemed to offer me a community of people willing and eager to experiment.

Skills and personality
I think the key skill is constant curiosity. You have to be a very good observer and listener, and be able to research and learn new stuff all the time. You need to combine all that with common sense, as well as an understanding of interaction, technology and what design really is.

You also have to be aware of what is going on in the industry and beyond, and find new samples and information all the time. I love analysing good and bad examples, on the Net, of work similar to what I’m doing. It’s good to be very flexible about change too. That’s essential in this job, as things change pretty fast.

Freedom and control
It depends on where I’m working, and with whom. My jobs always have to fit a certain work structure, and that has a great influence on how they pan out.

At the moment I’m quite lucky because, in design terms, I’m deciding what the final product looks like. This is quite an extraordinary position to be in, because my work is not just about how the product looks. Usually what I do is a direct result of collaboration with a lot of different people: clients, managers, art directors and programmers. To be honest though, ‘collaboration’ isn’t always the right word. Just once, I experienced an idealised form of teamwork and it felt really good. It was an unconditional and constant sharing of knowledge, experience and enthusiasm. It was down to a combination of factors and great people.