17 Designers you Should Know and their Workspaces

Here at WDL we like to keep you posted on everything about Web Design, creativity and inspiration. And we also like to present you talented and inspiring designers, illustrators and artists. Today we gathered a list of designers you should know. Along with their bio, we will show their workspace, so you can check out other designer’s setups. Feel free to leave a comment and a pictures of your workspace.

Romina Kavcic

Romina Kavcic is the owner of Nueva, design studio based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has a love for creativity, technology, trends and users. When not thinking about design she’s geeking out over films or wondering in nature.

Megan Robichaud

Megan is a graphic designer and illustrator from [Hampton] New Brunswick, Canada, currently living in the beautiful city of Vancouver. She is a recent graduate of the Art Institute of Vancouver’s Graphic Design program, working as a freelance designer and illustrator. Megan is pretty excited by most things design-related, but she is particularly captivated by illustration and package design.

 

 

Caitlin McEvoy

Taking particular interest in hand-drawn lettering and typographic illustration, Caitlin McEvoy is a graphic design enthusiast of many years. A creative type from a young age, Caitlin has taught herself everything she knows about good design. Design, in all its forms, is the core of her day-to-day operations; always striving to better her knowledge and skills. Currently dividing time between University life in Hull and home life in rural Leicestershire, Caitlin lives a content lifestyle working as a freelance designer as and when the right project comes along.

 

Lucie Karásková

“I’m 21 years old iOS designer from Prague, Czech Republic. I’m specialized in Icons and UI design. Lover of good food, porsche cars and apple things ”

 

Adham Dannaway

Adham Dannaway is a User Interface Designer with a passion for designing clean and functional user experiences. Also an avid Front End Developer who focuses on writing clean, elegant and efficient code. Loves HTML5, CSS3, WordPress, jQuery, trance music and Star Wars. Catch him at adhamdannaway.com or on Twitter – @AdhamDannway , Facebook or Dribbble .

 

Tais Horta Trovão

Freelancer graphic and textile-pattern designer based in San Francisco, California. Tais works with Letterpress printings, Business cards, Identities, Packaging, Wedding invitations, Textile-pattern designs.

 

 

Osvaldas Valutis

Osvaldas Valutis was born in the summer of 88″ and currently lives in beautiful Klaipėda, Lithuania. Since 2003 he has been a web designer who specializes in website design, typography and front-end development: HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

 

 

Timothy Whalin

Timothy Whalin is a strategy-focused interaction designer based in Denver, Colorado, using user experience to solve business problems and create engaging user interfaces. He is a mobile UX designer at Deloitte Digital.

 

Callum Chapman

Callum Chapman is a user interface designer from the UK, and has been running Circlebox Creative for the past 4 years. He is also currently working on his side-project called DRINK Manchester whilst traveling with his MBP and Canon SLR.

 

Linda Eliasen

Description by Linda:

Notable things:
Desktop backgrounds: neil armstrong suiting up for Apollo 11, and a nasa wind tunnel control room.
Standard apple setup with the retina display and my spaceship of a mouse – the logitech MX I think. I do all my everything with that mouse. She’s a doll.

Folder where I manage my projects in real life! I don’t use digital software or apps to organize my projects – this method works best for me. I have 1 index card dedicated to a project. the index card has a to-do list on it for that project, and a short list of things i need to know about it. then i paperclip all associating documents/sketches/comps/printouts/ etc to that index card.
pencil holder with: Kind bar, nail file, clippers, tweezers, and floss (a girl’s gotta be prepared). Paper clips, tiny notebooks, index cards, field notes pencils, fancy copiic pens, and notes stuck to it: the current type/margin standard sizes i’m using for codecademy’s site

Coffee mug from batdorf & branson, my favorite Atlanta roaster. LWYD coasters to give to people who are fans of tacos and letterpresses things (these people are hard to come by). Brown bag full of goodies from russanddaughters (left as a surprise by a very sweet friend), orange notebook, sanrio stationery, kindle, a book about Sagan’s golden voyager record, and a book about an artist turned astronaut.

Minty green post-its.
Aeron chair. so ugly, but so damn comfortable.

 

Alex Riegert-Waters

“Alex Riegert-Waters graduated from the University of Arizona in 2009 with a BFA in Visual Communication. His interests include drawing, breakfast cereal regardless of what time it is, color, and growing and maintaining a beard. He currently works for (Moxie Sozo) in Boulder, Colorado and is focused on becoming more awesome.”

 

Kerem

I’m a designer of digital products in his late 20s who is a little too into simplicity and pixel-perfection. I studied interactive visual imaging and photography in Missouri, and somehow ended up in foggy San Francisco designing things for companies like Fitbit, Pinterest, One Kings Lane, Zendesk…

I am currently running my small digital product design studio named 34 West Co in San Francisco where we partner with smaller teams to simplify the relationships between humans and computers.

 

 

 

Marcos Torres

“I’m a Graphic Artist from Porto Alegre, Brazil. I’m also a contributor for Abduzeedo , doing some tutorials and design related posts.

 

Keith Davis Young

“Growing up deep in the verdant bosom of Bryan,TX, art came as natural to Keith Davis Young as sitting on porches and catching lightning bugs. After picking up a degree from Baylor University and getting his fill of fluorescent lighting, boardrooms, and 5 years in ad agency experience, he struck out on his own as a full-time freelancer.

Now specializing in design, photography, and bear hugs.

His photographic work has been featured in many interesting publications, including but not limited to magazines like Vice, Dazed, Frankie, Wilder Quarterly, Mint, Huh, Slice, Positive, The Photo Album: Vol. 1, Tell Mum Everything is Ok, Austin Monthly as well as less tangible destinations like Triangle Triangle, Booooooom, The Quiet Life, and the Shashin Collective. He currently enjoys the hell out of being based in Austin, Texas with his english bulldog, Moose. He will gladly have a beer with you.”

Note: Keith recently moved his studio so he is still working on his new office. He was kind enough to send us a pic of the space and we will definitely follow up in the future to see how it ended up looking

 

Jason Wu

Lead product designer at Zendesk. I am a San Francisco based designer, an Apple fan, loves snowboarding, photography and believes design is delivering on simplicity and functionality.

 

Eva Black

I’m Eva Black, owner and graphic designer of my little Los Angeles based design studio, Eva Black Design. I began freelancing while finishing up my undergrad and have since received a BFA in Studio Arts with an emphasis in Graphic Design. I have a love for design and a drive to create.

 

Jory Raphael

Jory Raphael is a designer and illustrator based in Burlington, Vermont. He specializes in the clean and usable at Sensible World , and is the co-founder of Notabli . Jory is the guy behind all of the artwork and logos for 5by5 , and is the creator of the custom crafted icons at Symbolicons .

My office is in Three West Collective , an awesome co-working space in Burlington, Vermont.

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12 Things People Hate About Your Website

1) Pop-Up Ads
Let's get the most obvious one out of the way. Pop-ups are seriously annoying. Yes, a pop-up could get you a few new email subscribers, but is that really worth all the traffic you lose when visitors abandon your site in annoyance? Convert site visitors into leads with well-written content and compelling CTAs/offers, not interruptive gimmicks.

2) Automatically Playing Multimedia Content When a Page Loads

Shhhh! I wasn't supposed to be on this site at work! If someone's enjoying what they thought was a silent browsing session and they're bombarded with your theme song or a talking head on a video for which they didn't press "play" and can't find the button for "stop," what do you think they're going to do? Some might fumble for their mute button, but I can more easily locate the back button in my browser than my computer's volume controls. Let visitors choose to play your multimedia content; don't force it on them.

3) Disorienting Animations

You're probably familiar with the blink test by now -- the 3 seconds users have to orient themselves on any given web page before they click 'back' in their browser. Animations, auto-play videos, blinking and flashing paid advertisements, and other interactive entertainment may seem really cool (I'm sure it's very well designed!) but it detracts from a visitor's focus during those critical 3 seconds. Nix the animations, and let visitors focus on what they can do on that page with clearly written headlines and explanatory copy.

4) Generic Stock Photography

You've heard using images is great for your inbound marketing, so you go browsing and find this gem for your website:

Are we supposed to believe they work at your company? And are they always that delighted to collaborate over a piece of notebook paper? Show pictures of customers, real people that work at your company, your product, and your location. Or if you're particularly design savvy, create visuals yourself that directly relate to what you do. Images are helpful if they clarify something for a visitor -- generic stock photography doesn't help visitors, so by extension, it doesn't help you.

5) Including a 'Contact Us' Form in Lieu of Contact Information

A 'Contact Us' form may seem like an easy way to generate an opt-in email list, but it's really the least valuable form of lead generation for you and your site visitors. It's terribly generic, and doesn't indicate the contact actually wants to receive ongoing communications from you -- it's more likely they have a one-time problem or request that needs to be addressed.
So let's say they do in fact have a one-time request. There's nothing wrong with having a "Contact Us" module on your site; but it should never be the only means of communication between you and your customers. If your visitor or customer needs help, they want it now. They don't want to fill out a form and wait to see when, if ever, they get a response. Let people get in touch with you via email, the phone, and social media, and make that information available on your website.

6) Unintelligible 'About Us' Page

Does your 'About Us' page explain what you do in business babble, or using the words and phrases common to the general population? Let's play a translation game using HubSpot's 'About Us' page copy. Would you know what we did if our 'About Us' page said this (thankfully, it doesn't)?
HubSpot assists organizations across multiple countries reduce churn by backfilling the sales pipeline with highly qualified traffic that generates leads that convert into customers with high lifetime value. We achieve this through leading-edge software that integrates all marketing channels for a synergistic view of the data that determines and prioritizes the high-value marketing activities.
What? Let's translate that into the way people actually speak!
HubSpot all-in-one marketing software helps more than 6,000 companies in 45 countries attract leads and convert them into customers. A pioneer in inbound marketing, HubSpot aims to help its customers make marketing that people can actually love.
Got it, we make marketing software that helps you get leads and customers. Do a business babble check on your 'About Us' page to make sure you're speaking in a language non-experts can understand. I recommend running it by a few friends and family members that don't work in your industry for the best results.

7) SEO-Driven Copy
Remember back in the early 2000s when you went to a website and saw paragraphs and paragraphs of copy? Aside from being visually overwhelming, if you read that copy you'd find nothing more than a bunch of keyword-dense copy meant for crawlers, not humans. Unfortunately, some websites are still writing for bots, even though Google's algorithm is far more sophisticated at determining a page's relevancy than it was 10 years ago. In fact, now Google will ding you for these types of activities! There's a difference between search engine optimized content and over-optimized content. Don't write for crawlers; write for humans.

8) Not Including Social Sharing Buttons on Your Content

If you're writing for humans, you probably have some really interesting content on your site. Content that people want to share on social media, perhaps. That's why it's a huge disappointment to scroll up and down looking for a "Tweet This!" button, only to realize there aren't any social sharing buttons on your website! These buttons make social sharing easy for your readers -- they don't have to copy and paste your URL, shorten it, and compose a tweet. And easy social sharing options means your content gets more visibility, which means more site traffic, better search engine rankings, and more lead generation opportunities.

9) You Don't Have a Blog

Perhaps I'm biased, but visiting a website without a blog is a turn off. Visitors want to learn about you, and in today's world where consumers are performing in-depth company research on their own before ever contacting a sales person, an 'About Us' page isn't enough to tell the full story. Think of it like this -- the 'About Us' page is like your personality at a job interview, and your blog is your personality after a few drinks. After reading through a sample of blog posts over a long span of time, visitors have a much better understanding of who you are (awesome), who works at your company, what you believe, and how you've grown over time.

10) Titles and Content are Incongruous

If you're an avid content creator, you know how important a well-crafted title is. Great titles are what cause people to click through in their RSS, emails, and search engines to read what you have written. But if they're met with content that's unrelated to the title you provided, you'll disappoint visitors -- and they'll abandon your site. While it's important to capture peoples' attention in titles, make sure it isn't misleading and your content can actually live up to what you promised you'd deliver.

11) Your Call-to-Action Copy Doesn't Align With the Offer

Along the same lines, your call-to-action should align with what visitors receive when they redeem your offer. There's nothing more frustrating than being promised a 50% off coupon in the call-to-action copy, only to redeem it and find there's a caveat that says you must first spend $1,000. On select items. In-store purchases only. This is not only insulting to your visitors, but it will also kill your reputation and the conversion rates of your calls-to-action and landing pages.

12) Your Internal Linking Isn't User-Friendly

When done correctly, internal links are helpful for readers and website alike. They point readers to other relevant information, and help you improve the organic ranking for important pages on your own website. But some websites seem to have trouble executing internal linking correctly, pointing users to irrelevant pages, linking strange phrases within the copy, and overdoing it to the point of making content unreadable.
Include internal links only to relevant pages on your website that will enhance a reader's experience, and include that link on the anchor text that makes the most sense. Recognize that sometimes, the link that makes the most sense isn't keyword-optimized anchor text, either, like in this example from yesterday morning's blog post.

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