Floobe

Magnus shot to online fame being one of the founding three partners of Woothemes. Floobe got to chat to Magnus about where it all started, where its going and all things Woo!

Full name and Age please

Magnus Jepson, 30 in a few days.

Favourite Biscuit and Drink?

Stratos (Norwegian choc-bar) and Coke Zero

Last book your read and last movie you saw?

“Anvil! The story of Anvil” and “Angels & Demons”

Where and when did it all start?

For me it started with web design as a hobby, next to my full-time job as a programmer. It evolved to a passion, and eventually I stumbled into WordPress and started making WordPress themes, which led to co-founding WooThemes.

Is there anyone in the industry you look up to?

Since I’ve only been in the web industry for a short time, I never really got to know who the “leaders” in the industry were. But I have a great deal of respect for designers like Liam (www.wefunction.com), Collis (www.envato.com) and obviously Adii (www.adii.co.za) which was the guy I looked up to from the start of my WordPress venture. We are now business partners which is kinda cool.

You’re one of the 3 original Woo members, how did you become Woo?

I started out by myself, creating a few free WP themes, then eventually selling a few of them. I then got in contact with Adii, who was also in the market for “premium” WP themes, and did a collaboration with him. That progressed into another couple of  themes and soon after that we decided to re-brand to WooThemes, together with Mark Forrester.

What does a general day consist of for you?

Mostly coding, support, admin on WooThemes. I’m pretty used to working 8-4 from my old job, so it hasn’t been that hard for me to go freelance, and I really enjoy my daily tasks, which make it a lot easier to get up in the morning. I try to sneak in a few minutes of Guitar Hero every now and again too.

You live out in Norway and have only met your co-founders once, does it get lonely not having the other guys around?

Not really… we have our weekly skype chats, and also text chat on skype every day, so I feel as though I’m part of an office, although we don’t have the physical contact with each other. It’s also a lot easier to get work done when you don’t have distractions around you.

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Your design looks great in photoshop right? You’re just about to start taking it to pieces and prep the graphic files before creating the XHTML and CSS. You get to the background and you just can’t get it to tile correctly? A quick tutorial in creating tiled patterns in photoshop and how to quickly prep them for use on the web. Using this tutorial you will be able to reduce the size of your main background images by quickly implementing a pattern which can be tiled and repeated with ease.

Starting from scratch, create a new document in Adobe Photoshop 500px wide and 200px high. In this instance I created some squares and rotated them through 45 degrees and tiled them accordingly. I added in a background colour to make it more aesthetically pleasing and to show the pixels when zoomed in.

Using the rectangular marquee tool you can select from one corner and by holding down shift, drag the cursor to the exact same place on another Diamond (Square), I have used guides on the image below to show what I mean.

After dragging the rectangular marquee tool whilst holding down the shift button go to and click edit then Define Pattern.

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Have you ever been working in Illustrator using strokes and whenever you enlarge your image the strokes do not stay the same size?

There are a couple of options in Illustrator which we don’t necessarily pick up straight away and this is one of them. You can spend hours working with strokes, detailing a particular piece of artwork and when you enlarge or decrease the size of the artwork everything goes wrong and you have to adjust the size of each individual stroke to get it looking right again. Sometimes it can take you hours.

Fear not… If this is happening to you, you will be happy to know that there is a fix and it should cut hours out of your work time.

So if you’re having trouble with your strokes, follow this four click trick…

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David Pache (dache.ch) has always caught my eye as a designer, with a never ending list of inspirational logo design works. At 25 he has established himself in the world as a leading logo designer. Big thanks to David for taking part in this interview for Floobe.

1. Full Name and Age please.

David Pache, 25

2. Favourite Biscuit and Drink.

Butter biscuits (Petit Lu etc.); Coffee

3. Last Book you read and last movie you saw.

Adrian Frutiger - Typefaces: The Complete Works; Slumdog Millionaire

4. Where and When did it all start?

I created the concept of dache when I was finishing design college. I knew that I wanted to be self-employed in order to have full control of my designs therefore decided to focus on logo design with additional services such as business cards, letterheads, website design and consultation. Back in 2005 I took the plunge, after completing some research through online design competitions to gauge how my designs would be received. With many positive reactions, I launched the website and business.

5. Do you have any formal qualifications and do you think these helped in your professional development?

I do have formal qualifications however when it comes to design, I think that it is more your inspirations which develop you as a professional. That said, I would not be where I am today without learning the techniques and history of design and art, in order to have the ability to express my ideas into working concepts.

6. What do you think makes a good designer, a qualification or the lust for the job at hand?

As said before, I do think that qualifications are invaluable however, if a designer does not have the perseverance to put their ideas out there for public opinions, they are just that - a qualification! As with many trades, we are nothing without our clients therefore I think there is always room for more designers but it is a difficult market to get recognised in therefore a lust for the job is essential.

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What is minimalistic design? Is it white space? Is it less colour? Is it less space in general? Everyone has different opinions about using less in web design. The awesome minimalistic designs below are just a few from around the web.

Elliott Kember formerly of Carsonified.

Mark Boulton design is simplistic and clean

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Are you looking for FREE grunge photoshop brushes? Look no further as we have compiled  a list of resources where you can find hundreds of free photoshop grunge brushes. Leave a comment if you’ve used them before or submit your work into the gallery. If you can find anymore, send the link through and it will get added to the list.

Brusheezy have a massive range of brushes which you can filter to gain access to their hundreds of FREE grunge photoshop brushes.

Bittbox have 5 sets of grunge wings providing 10 brushes in total.

The Outlaw Design Blog have a range of photoshop brushes which are free. Some of the best brushes in this post are on that blog.

We Function have a free grunge brush set holding 33 subtle grunge textures and effects. They have a lot more to offer so head over.

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