This month we bring you Matthew Smith of Squared Eye and Pattern Tap (probably our favorite design patterns website!) Matthew is a great design thinker and really loves bringing fine detail to his work. If you ever get to meet him you’ll find just within a few minutes that his passion for design is highly contagious (he’s just one of those people that pump you up about what you do.)

How or where do you find inspiration?
Inspiration is a funny thing. A couple years ago I would have said that I found it mostly through web galleries. I had a magnifying glass out all the time. I wanted to see how people were handling navs, footers, lists, borders, background images, etc. In the last year I’ve been more and more interested in learning from the crafts of product design and print layout. I’m compelled by solving problems, believing that designing is more about being a thinker/feeler than massaging pixels into place. Running Pattern Tap: a web inspiration cousin of Unmatched Style helps me stay on top of the most reliable web trends, so that I can keep that design thinking in line with the way people are actually using the web. For the moment, that seems to be a good balance.

Who is the biggest influence on your work right now?
I’d say that getting to know Elliot Jay Stocks, and Tim Van Damme has been a real God-Send. They’ve been great for critiques and suggestions. If you haven’t already seen the work of Ian Coyle (SuperheroesHQ), you need to, he’s doing ridiculous things on the web. I recently started to pay attention to Andreas Pihlström as well. His work with Dropular.net is insane. Its really inspired the next version of Pattern Tap.

Where are your “design roots”? Print or Web?
Ha ha. How about Pottery. I learned the visual language through Richard DeVore at Colorado State University. One of the most talented and ornery people I’ve ever met. He taught a handful of us how to think visually, and put us all onto the work of Rudolph Arnheim, and specifically “Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye“. Having roots outside the web gives me a healthy distrust of the pixel to solve every problem. The pixel is a tool like any other, and in the hands of anyone who understands the visual language its quite powerful, but on its own, its no better or worse than an easily distributed crayon drawing.

How important is it to know the history of design?
Honestly, I think that depends. Truth be told, I don’t know all that much about the history of design. I want to learn more all the time, but my need for the knowledge of that history is commensurate with what it will help me achieve in my work. If design history can help you keep a bigger picture of design, then by all means, dig in, otherwise, there may be better ways to spend your time?

Serif or Sans?
I’m a geek for a nuanced slab-serif like Archer, or Zine Slab-Serif, but the more I learn about type, the more it becomes like beer. I don’t have favorites. I love a Tripel style Belgian Ale like nobodies business, but give me a Dopple-Bock in January over a Tripel any day. I’m not likely to show my wife I love her in a note written with Gotham Black, but listing the best things she cooks I’d easily use Gotham Blacks line of numbers to count them out.

Do you code and design? Are you a “Hybrid”?
These days I keep my hands mostly wet with visual design and art direction, but I like to keep my code brain agile so I make sure to break out TextMate every so often and play with the latest CSS. I’m particularly curious to learn more about HTML5 at the moment.

What’s your favorite part of the creative process?
Five hours into the first design, listening to Explosions in the Sky or Interpol, and the solution to the design clicks. I usually start drumming in the air at that point, totally unaware that my colleagues are snickering at me.

What makes your creative process different from everybody else?
I don’t know if this is different or not, but I know that I could give a crap about being “original”. That probably informs the way I work. I constantly want to learn from others. I consider the fact that I’ve had any success at all a huge gift, and a responsibility to share what I’ve learned in return.

What do you see as the single biggest shift in the evolution of design over the past 5 years?
In terms of technology, the iPhone. In terms of web design, I’m happy just to see a bit of maturing as web designers grow in the craft of design to inform their craft of web design.

What’s the difference between User Experience and User Interface design?
UI design should be informed by what is learned from User Experience testing, and UI design is only one small part of implementing a holistic User Experience. UE includes but isn’t limited to Brand communication, Layout Design, Copy Writing, Design Psychology, and Web Technologies. Most of us don’t have the projects that allow for all that stuff to have separate teams, so we just end up trying to be really well rounded UI designers 🙂

What makes one a web design professional?
Making money at web design? Adding something of value to the web design community? I don’t know, does it matter? I feel more like a student than ever before. Maybe someday I’ll be a pro, but I hope not.

What are designers/developers doing right (or wrong) in the web 2.0 world?
Well, I usually find that I go wrong when I try to think about the next BIG thing, instead of just asking hard questions in a team of great people, and trying to solve small issues in innovative ways.

What’s your favorite flavor of design or development programs/languages?
I use Photoshop, but usually think its a poor tool for what I really want to do. I’d love to learn Fireworks, but no one has given me a paid two month vacation to do that yet, so that might be awhile. Either way, the industry is lacking a tool that has great graphic layout utilities combined with a dynamic rendering engine for styles, and shifting content.

What is your favorite book?
The Bible. I’m a life idiot. I need this to remember who I am, how to love, and who I’ll get the strength from to do anything worthwhile. I really love anything by Chaim Potok too, of which “My Name is Asher Lev” is my favorite.

What is your favorite movie?
Right now, Kung Fu Panda. Its so easy to watch and enjoy. I have two young boys, they wear us out. I don’t have the energy to watch some of my other favorites right now (Brazil, Baraka, Magnolia, Princess Mononoke, Good the Bad and the Ugly, Blade Runner…)

Who is your favorite musical artist (or What musical artist are you listening to the most right now?)
Explosions in the Sky
Arcade Fire
Interpol
Sigur Ros
M83
Pretty Lights
DJ Tiesto
The Psalters
The National
George Winston (when I need quiet)
…And anything epic that reminds of the really real story I’m in the middle of.

Matthew Smith – Principal / Creative Director / Designer
An experienced Creative Director and designer for top companies, with a BA in Fine Arts, a two-year stint in visual art in the UK, and apprenticeship at the RMAC, Matthew also speaks and writes for the web design community (AIGA SC, Digital Web, et al.). When he’s not designing, you’ll find him building treehouses for his two young boys or sipping on a fine Belgian Tripel with his wife Amy.

Also make sure and follow Matthew’s design ramblings in 140 characters or less : @squaredeye