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Introduction by Lou Simeone

Designer Brian Miller took time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for Illustration Pages. Brian is the owner of the Brian Miller Design Group, located in Norwalk Connecticut. The Brian Miller Design Group is a graphic design studio that focuses on brand-building for leading and emerging brands. Their services include Web design and development, brand identity, publication design, annual reports and Web advertising.

This interview will be of particular interest for those of you who are trying to make the transition from print design to web design. I've been there myself and that's why I wanted to interview Brian Miller on this topic. Brian has extensive knowledge on this subject and is the author and designer of the book, Above the Fold, an excellent resource for all designers. Above the Fold explores topics such as understanding web design, the anatomy of a website, sitemaps, search engine optimization (seo), web safe fonts and font replacement tools such as Cufon. If you don't know what any of these things are then you'll want to by his book. All of this and much more is covered in great detail. But for right now let's hit the ground running on the topic of Web design with Brian Miller

When did you make the jump from print design to web design and what prompted you to do so?

My very first job was my big jump. In 1995, I took a job as an in-house designer at First Brands corporation, makers of Glad Bags, STP Motor Oil and Scoop Away kitty litter. At one point, very early on in my stay there, someone came into the room of designers and said “Who here can design a Web site?” I raised my hand, but I had no idea how to design a Web site. A few months later the first ever Scoop Away kitty litter Web site was launched — catseyeview.com. To this day I still consider it one of my best sites. When the user arrived at the site they were asked their cat’s name. Upon entering it, the entire site was populated with the cat’s name. So instead of selling kitty litter to “your cat” we spoke directly to “fluffy,” for example. From a marketing standpoint it was revolutionary at the time.


Your formal training is as an artist and designer. Does web design satisfy you creatively?

Absolutely. I am of the mind that limitations breed creativity, and Web design comes with many limitations — although fewer each day. And although I am NOT a coder, I find the small bit of coding that I do just as rewarding and exciting as the design work that I do.

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One of the things that people frequently ask us is "What are you reading now?" Eric Childress has hooked up a feed from WorldCat to the front page of this blog to show what he's reading. Lorcan Dempsey's blog regularly features notes on his vast reading. I am almost done with Book 3 in my Laubach course, so I will be adding to that soon.

Now there's a new newsletter from OCLC Programs and Research and IBIS Communications called Above the Fold. In the words of Jim Michalko, Vice President, RLG Programs, "Our intent is to pull together articles that relate to the work of the RLG Partnership and the information context in which we're all operating -- but that you might not see in the course of your regular awareness routines. Each citation will include a short annotation explaining why we think the article may be of interest to you. And each note will be attributed to the staff member whose thoughts on the issue and its relevance can be tapped."

Free subscriptions to Above the Fold, and other OCLC newsletters, are available here.

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