How to become a designer and get hired
Guest Contribution
I sat down with David Martin, the CEO and Founder of Fantasy Interactive, an independently owned human-centered design agency with a mission to impact the user experience in every-day products through bold design. They have an impressive client roster including Facebook, Spotify, HP, USAToday.com, Wacom and Google to mention a few. With over 200+ industry awards, David has managed to build a globally recognized brand. So when I thought of creating a design series that would help designers improve their craft and get hired, there was no better place to start than Fantasy Interactive.
Issue 1: Interview with Fantasy Interactive CEO David Martin
What you will learn
How David started and got into design
Influences and inspiration
Advice for those with no design experience
How to craft your portfolio
Standing out and getting hired
UI Reel from Fantasy on Vimeo.
Thank you so much David for joining us. David if you could take us back to when you were still a student and tell us a little bit about where you grew up. What did you study?
I started a long way from here. I started in Dublin, Ireland. When I went to school I could say I was not a good student. I communicated very visually and I was not so good at the academic side of things. I did not believe in certain subjects like history and even math which I knew I would not use so I kinda tuned out and daydreamed which ultimately put me in a position where I could not get into universities that I wanted to. I had to repeat exams and eventually ended up getting into college. I ended up getting into a communications course in Germany. I went to Sweden to look for jobs. Any type of jobs, on cruise ships, cleaning toilets, whatever it would take to get over to the States.
While this was going on I started exploring the Internet and found it very unattractive, very ones and zeros and as I was doing that I just found a passion for organizing it by redesigning it. My expectation of the Internet was that of the movie ‘Minority Report’ but then it wasn’t, so I started designing in my free time and that’s how I started.
What tools were you using?
I started off using something like a Squarespace, a website builder. Because I’d never designed in my life I picked it up listening to music and I found that I had a talent for designing things with the computer like reorganizing things on a page even though I cannot draw to save my life. But using a computer I can somehow design little details of effort into anything. No matter what profession you are in this does pay dividends down the road.
Were there any influences or inspirations along the way like mentors?
No, nothing like that but inspiration came from living in Ireland and growing up on Knight Rider. I love things that are well organized, things that were well taken care of. I just had an affection for it. I was always blown away by game UI, playing games like Nintendo but I always felt they could have been more finessed, refined and that I could bring a little bit of color into things.
How then did you enter the industry?
So basically, I started designing in Flash 3, the very early days and I started to see that this platform had motion capabilities and I wanted to bring UI to life. That was a huge driver for me to combine those things. So I started making Flash sites and they started getting noticed because no one was really working with Flash except maybe banners. So I started building websites and brought some user interaction to them. It was just mind blowing. Very similar to how on Dribbble, people use the GIF to take designs to the next level. It’s always looking at how you can take something to the next level. The first job that we got was around US$20k with a game studio and from there we started hiring people.
We basically sacrificed everything to create a portfolio because I knew the portfolio would create credibility and start attracting clients. In our second year, there was a phone call from Time Warner and they came in to hire us to redo their portal.
For me, you have to be able to take those opportunities and make the most of them. Time Warner came in, then Xbox came in a week after so it was all happening at the same time.There was never any room for snowflake mentality in our business. We are not going to push people too hard or bend over backwards for our clients because our business is built on people. When there are lows, our team comes together and figures out how to make it work. It’s knowing your principles, your DNA and when it’s time, to drive hard. When you surround yourself with good people is easier to deal with those situations.
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