Reinette De Villiers: The Beauty of Design - FFE interview #1

FFE Interview #1
Reinette Da Villiers: the Beauty of design

I’m very please to have Reinette De Villiers with me today to discuss web graphics and design in general.

Hi thank you for having me on this exceptionally wonderful day.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m a graphic designer, Cape Town originally, I do a lot of work in both web and print design. I’ve been in the industry for 6 years.

You specialize in quite a specific area of design, can you tell us exactly what it is you do?

I wouldn’t call it specific, there’s a lot of things I can do. I do prefer working in print, especially in brand development and coporate identities. If I could illustrate all day but as work goes… you know.

What is it you are doing at work at the moment then?

At the moment it’s mostly web graphics. It’s for a web media company so web graphics, printed brochures, inhouse print work, logo design… Not the type of work you do at a normal agency as it’s all in-house, so it’s all specific to the brand, so it’s not as diverse either. But you do get to know more about the brands itself. It’s got a lot of boundaries but you play around with it.

I’ve seen your portfolio and it’s nothing short of fantastic (ray-blush/scoffs), so how do you keep coming up with new ideas and designs.

I think it’s really really easy. Inspiration you can find in everything, absolutely everything. Especially being in a city like London at the moment, inspiration is everywhere, photographs, graffetti, listening to people, watching people, what they do. I do take a lot of photography aswell. I like taking photographs as my base and taking design from that. It probably comes naturally.

Despite it “coming naturally” do you ever get times when you have a mental block and you just can’t think of anything?

Definitely, Definitely…

And what do you do to inspire youself?

Usually moan, get too upset and smoke to much cigarettes. Then finally resort to asking friends to help out - getting people’s perspective on it. Because usually what happens you get so lost in the job you can’t really see where your going to or why you started in the first paste. It’s always good to get input from people. Putting yourself out there.

So getting feedback from other people?

Feedback, absolutely! Critisism, positive hopefully, always good.

Have you ever pinched ideas off other designers and if so do you feel guilty afterwards? Bit of a tough one I’m afraid.

That is a tough one. A lot of people will say that in a post modern society there is nothing like an original idea because everything has been done. So you will find that ideas evolve from eachother. Especially working in the commercial market you will see what, at the moment, is appealing for your mass market and take if from there. So yes, you do look at other designers work but the idea is not to steal it but actually just build on it.

How did you get started as a designer?

Well you see my mum gave me this box of crayons when I was 5 (all- laugh). It was one of these magic 60 box of crayolas or what-do-you-call-it. After drawing on the walls in the hallway and the floor and everything else and stepping it into the carpet I think I didn’t look back.

Seriously, after school I first went to interior design, but always having graphic design in my mind as an interest. Then I did a bit of HTML. I checked out the source code on a website and though hmm, this looks interesting. Bought myself one of those HTML bibles - one of those you can kill somebody with - and started reading it and doing a few things in it and started building websites.

A friend of mine who had a digital printing company and graphic design agency at that time. He said he would like to go into web design and that he would teach me some graphic design if I’m up for it. So I started a year long apprenticeship with this company and actually ended up me going full time into graphic design and him going full time into web. So we did a complete swap. After that was freelance work and then I went onto an angency.

If any of our readers/listeners are interested in getting into graphic design where do you suggest they get started? Is there any books you recommend or any courses they could go on or anything you can think of?

There are some fantastic courses, it all depends on if it is something you want to go an study or.. it’s a tough one as there are some really amazing courses. If you’d like to go into more… or if you have an odd background, who is interested in arts and want to go into pure graphic design, webdesign, then I would actually say go get a degree go to London Royal College of Art or… I don’t really know all the places in the UK that well.

You think that it is really necessary to do a course? you can’t just…

It gives you a really good background, because even though you can manage the programmes or learn how to use them it doesn’t teach you the fundemental ideas around design and the basic edifice of it which is something like a school will teach you. Also you have your most fun while studying graphic design, more than when your working in the industry.

So you become more of a true artist rather than just someone who knows how to use photoshop?

I think you have a better background, and you get so much while you’re doing it. And you have time to develop your own style. Which is really important if you want to make yourself - get yourself out there. Also going to a school you get to do a lot more things you want. As soon as you start working for an agency or for clients you’re restricted.

With the courses are they all as good as eachother or is there some particular elements you should look out for in the curriculum.

Well if they are teaching Coral Draw or FrontPage 1… (all laugh).

Look for the mainstream programmes… that’s a tough one as I never studied graphic design because I approached it completely differently and now I’m advising people a different way. I approached it from the other side. But if you go and study definitely on the curriculum Adobe CS2, Adobe suite, used to be Macromedia.
Oh, and work on a MAC (all laugh).

FFE does not endorse that statement! (all laugh)

Any Good, Bad or Ugly awards you would like to give out today?

I’ve got a few favourites, but most of them have loads of brilliant sites on them. There are so many new sites every day that are amazing. The amount of time and thought that goes into it is mind blowing.

• Style Boost (stylish sites gallery)
• the FWA (favourite websites awards)
• Design Charts.com (weekly top 40)

Agencies that are doing brilliant websites as well, They are really changing the way we look at flash sites. Flash was a bit of a bad boy for a while in the eyes of the web industry.

• sofake.com
• wefail.com

Absoultely revolutionised the way people look at websites. There’s a lot more depth it’s a lot more active. Not the flat scrolling pages you usually see.

If I had to push you for a winner for good design…

I’ll have to come back to you on that one.

What future plans or upcoming events you’ll be at?

Huge plans I have huge plans for the future. But small small steps. This has been coming for quite some time. I want to start my own magazine and product label.

And What’s the Topic of the Magazine?

All about design. Based on Practical design. I’ve got a big thing about practical design. A lot of people do some really amazing creative things but in practice it doesn’t work, it can’t be applied. Going back to my interior design roots and using that with graphic design, get a nice interesting mix.

Are you doing this buy yourself or is this going to be a group effort.

The idea at the moment, on my own. But I would like to get a few people in, definitley, especially when it comes to the magazine. My label is “deadly beloved”, so watch out for it.

I’ll definitely be a subscriber.

oh please, This is something I will explore more on my website. There is so many opportunities and directions in design espcially if you apply it to objects you can use, practical things and not just something pretty on the wall.

A bit like you Ray. (all laugh)

If you want to see more of Reinette visit her website: www.raynet.co.za