A professional i admire……Jon Hicks

Last week in my tutorial i was asked to choose a professional that i admire from my chosen field, which is web design, and explain that choice.

The professional i have chosen is a man named Jon Hicks of the design agency Hicks Design.

Ive chose him for a number of reasons, but primarily because the work he does is pretty much exactly what i’d like to be doing myself in a few years down the line.

He doesn’t just design web sites, in his own words he designs for ‘print and new fangled media’ and particularly loves icons and logos.

 

Above are some examples of his work, both web sites and logos. I enjoy the appearance of all the above projects, all nicely designed without being too arty, simple without being too basic.

I’m extremely interested in logo design, an interest which was discovered as a result of my identities coursework last year, so the Firefox and Miro logos are particularly interesting to me.

I found out how time consuming and difficult a process it is to design logos last year and as a result i can really appreciate the work that must have gone in to create those, its a difficult balancing act between detail and simplicity and with the logos above i think he has captured that balance perfectly.

Now for a word regarding the web design aspect of Jon’s work.

Jon is an advocate of web standards and css based design, which is obviously an approach i am keen to take to my own web work in the future. The interesting thing is the way his websites still manage to be so appealing from a design perspective but also so good from a technical and usability perspective.

Looking at the above screen shot of his own personal website, i love the way that all the navigation is housed within the box on the right of the screen. So many websites are ruined by ugly and awkward navigation systems and this is a perfect example of how keeping it simple is best.

The multi-disciplinary approach to design is very much something that interests me, whilst i am specialising in web design this year i am very keen to develop my design skills across a variety of areas such as traditional graphic design for print, identity/branding design, motion graphics and i also retain a great interest in audio production, hopefully the combination of these skills will one day lead to me having my own design agency much in the same vein as Hicks Design.