Web designer Bill Bowman started designing after music school, in 1989, for his band and for a healthcare company. Basically, at the time, he thought his day job paid for the music dream. Little did he know, by merging the composition styles of music and design, that he was learning an invaluable combination of left and right brain and of first impressions and iteration. After four years freelancing and working for a healthcare company (creating everything from brochures to tradeshow booths) and designing one too many posters and CD jackets for his band, he ventured out on his own.

In 1994 Bowman realized that he wanted to learn as much as I could about the Internet. In 1995 he founded Bowman Design; since that time, he's been solving complex problems with simple design/tech solutions.

09.10.08

That First Great Melody

If you have a degree in what field is it? My time spent at school was actually at Berklee College of Music where I studied songwriting, composition and guitar.

What’s the best site you've seen lately? What's so great about it? Williams-Sonoma. The composition is gridded across a templates system, and the content hierarchy is well-managed with color. There’s also an excellent primary navigation and a consistent execution of type, color and a clean secondary navigation on category and sub-category pages. The button system has a hierarchy of primary and secondary actions (which many sites forget about, neglecting to leverage the quick muscle memory their users rely on). I also enjoy how the transparency of the site encourages visitors to engage through tools, video how-tos and recipes.

If you were to change professions, what would you choose to do? Movie and digital video effects and editing.

Design or technology? Which is more important? Why? I don’t think we can choose to rely on one or the other. And with the merger of frontend and backend via AJAX and a fast new super highway, lines are being crossed in a very good way. The best initiatives have a balance of design and tech where designers help coders with usability and coders help designers with opening up possibilities.

From where do your best ideas originate? Sleeping, dreaming and conceptualizing within a project that has a reasonable timeline.

How do you overcome a creative block? I run around and take pictures or write songs about people. Let’s be honest, all we creative folks ever do is sit in front of the computer where it’s easy to get all jammed-up. Without more human interaction, it’s too easy to get blocked and forget about the other people and places on this beautiful planet.

In one word describe how you feel when beginning a new project? Fresh.

What well-known site is most desperately in need of a redesign? World Wide Web Consortium. It’s a perfect example of usability being overrun by a lack of design and an excellent source of content that’s tough to get through. A simple implementation of better info architecture and navigation, templates that maintain consistent margins, grids and expanding on color (there are really more than two) and type would be a good start. It’s ironic, but it would be nice to see the creators execute on everything the content talks about.

Do you have creative outlets other than Web design? Yep. Singing and songwriting.

What music are you listening to right now? Ryan Adams’s, Easy Tiger and Super Extra Gravity by The Cardigans.

What product/gadget can you not live without? My iPhone and Gibson Les Paul.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve bought online? A punching bag.

What’s your favorite quote? “Angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly.” —GK Chesterton

Do you have any advice for people just entering the profession? Leverage the computer as a tool, but be wary of relying on it for more.

What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your career? You can’t do everything yourself, you need to build or join a small army of talented communicators.