Exclusive interview with Joe Gillespie

Google rates his WPDfD.com as #1 for Web Design. What does the guru of web design think about the industry after he's retired?

Joe Gillespie, author of famous WPDfD.com, from which he retired on the first of December, sees things from the perspective of one whose major contributions during his career involve more than one Industry and span more than one decade. Indeed, as you will see in this interview with WDL, his sophisticated viewpoint is not limited to Web Design, as he comes from a larger Industry which probably governs the world - DESIGN.


WDL: For those very few people who don't know who you were and what you did in the web design world before your retirement, please write your own two-three sentence epitaph.

Joe Gillespie: My site is called Web Page Design for Designers and aimed primarily at graphic designers – people who, like myself, were trained in print design but want to expand into ‘new media'. Apart from the technical issues, the Web is a different medium and requires a different mindset from a design perspective. I think that I have helped to bridge the gap.


WDL: Are you really going to retire from Minfonts.com and running web design directory also?

Joe Gillespie: MiniFonts.com will continue as there are other people involved, not just me. The directory will continue until all the paid-for listings expire.


WDL: Don't you think that by stopping updating WPDFD you will lose your visitors and the site will go into oblivion? Do you have children or progeny who can continue running WPDFD? Or do you think that yours was a brand built on personality?

Joe Gillespie: I have been sending out a monthly newsletter to about 3500 subscribers that announces the monthly updates but the traffic is more like 150,000 visitors per month that come to the site via Google or from the 20,000+ (Alta Vista's estimate) external links. I think it will be around for a few years yet, even without new articles. There are over 400 pages of information there, okay some of it is dated technically, but remember that the site is about ‘graphic design' not technicalities, so it is still of value.

I don't know any natural successor that could continue where I left off but there are plenty of other Web design sites out there. It's good that people get a variety of opinions and styles.


WDL: You were born, and grew up, in Belfast, Ireland, and though you now live and work in London, you perhaps maintain a strong affiliation with your homeland. What are the irreducible things about you which are very Irish and which shape your daily existence? I mean you've mentioned Black Bush Whiskey before… What other Irish things can you simply not live without in the sooty air of London ? And how has your background shaped your career choices and influenced your design related activity?

“ WPDFD was a personal project, not a business venture. ”

Joe Gillespie: I left Northern Ireland in the late '60 to go to the Royal College of Art in London . That was before the ‘troubles' started. I used to go back regularly when I had family over there but it was a different place from the one I remembered in my youth. I have little reason to go back now. There is no ‘home' to go to and after 40 years away, I wouldn't know anyone. I have fond memories of my childhood and I'd much rather remember it the way it was. For some reason, Black Bush Whiskey is now almost impossible to find in London . I don't think that my geographical background has influenced my career in any way at all however it does have a major influence on my accent and my sense of humour.


WDL: Given that Ireland became something of a major player in the IT Industry, many thanks to IBM's intrusion in the mid 90s, yet regrettably retired before ever really getting a chance to move from the bench to warm-ups and extensive play time, what would you say was the major contribution, if any, made during Ireland's short moment of stardom in the major leagues of the Web Design Industry?

Joe Gillespie: They still make Macs in Ireland, don't write it off yet! I am honestly unaware of any connection between Ireland and Web design. That's not to say that there isn't, only that I am unaware of it.


WDL: You once said that your favorite books are “ Treasure Island ” and Asminov's “I, Robot”… Imagine that you are the author who combines these books into one -- in the context of the W3C consortium, what would the plot be like? Who's the hero?

Joe Gillespie: As a child, I loved Treasure Island, both the book and the film with Robert Newton as Long John Silver. I managed to find an old Betamax tape where I had recorded the movie off television recently. I was able to transfer it to DVD and watch it again. It's still magic.

Robots. I have actually written a lot of robot stories myself – mostly unpublished, but you will find one of them at Funwithfonts.com I used to make robots and I have a collection of about seventy toy robots in my living room that goes back to the ‘50s. So, Asimov was a major influence.

I am also a great fan of the late Douglas Adams. My son actually worked for him a few years ago but I only met him once. His ‘Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy' is about as close as I can imagine to what you are suggesting. There's Marvin the paranoid robot – “Life. Don't talk to me about life!” And there's Zaphod Bebblebrox – but instead of a parrot on his shoulder, he has a second head.

The hero you talk about is obviously “The Internet”. That, I believe, will eventually become a sentient being. Every computer connected to it will be a cell in its body and as programs get smarter, those cells will work together synergistically just like biological cells. I also believe that computers, as we know them will become redundant eventually being replaced by organic computer implants in the human body and we will all interact at an unconscious level. I think the Borg call it “The Hive”. “Everybody”, that's some super hero!


WDL: You defined an Internet pioneer as being a person who… And what will tomorrow's pioneer be involved in if not in Internet? What is our next virgin frontier? What's the difference between being a pioneer and being a colonialist in the Net? I think today's pioneers will become tomorrow's colonialists. Who are, from your point of view, the colonialists?

Joe Gillespie: Before Isaac Newton invented gravity, things would just float up into the air uncontrollably. Before George Eastman invented colour, the World was black and white – yes, I've seen the pictures. I think that the next major step for mankind is to uninvent gravity – it's so restricting. I'll have to come back to this “Hive” concept because I really do think that that's where we are headed. I think that individuals will become less important and the “collective consciousness” will prevail. It worked for the ants, it can work for us. If some alien beings pointed an “intelligence sensor array” at Earth, it would probably detect ants first as being the prime intelligence on the planet.


WDL: Since you represent both designers and programmers, perhaps you will share your honest opinion regarding priority in website authorship. What is the right order of action when people create a website that contains backend programming? Should they get a design first and then, as programmers, integrate scripts into their current design or should they wait until programmers write all necessary code and then order design? Maybe there is totally alternative way?

Joe Gillespie: My philosophy about Web design is “compelling content, delivered painlessly”. Unfortunately, that is pretty rare. Design is ultimately about making something best suited to its purpose. My career has been in advertising so I see the “purpose” of my work as to help to sell something. I know that that is not the purpose of every Web site, but most sites have a purpose – to communicate – but the people that produce them are often poor communicators struggling with flaky technologies. Take my bank for instance. I've been complaining about their online banking service for years now – it's difficult to use and often doesn't work at all. I look at their markup and JavaScript, it's complete and utter rubbish. This is one of the major banks in the UK and they can't put the simplest of pages together. As soon as I open a page, I get a string of JavaScript errors in my Mozilla JavaScript Console. I have read the error messages out over the phone to the support line. I might as well save the price of the phone call and do it with the phone on the hook! Sadly, this is par for the course here in the UK . I would change banks but the others are just as bad or worse.

Do you remember when people used to bang on their radio and television sets to make them work? That doesn't happen so much these days because the products have become more reliable. The Web still has a long way to go in that respect and “corporate culture” is the gremlin in the works. It needs a good hard thump!


WDL: You mentioned in your closing editorial, printed in December, that you have never considered WDPFD a commercial project. Is this why you limited yourself to three days per month for your editorials, articles, reviews, etc.?

“ When I design something, I investigate what the purpose is, who is doing the communicating and to whom. You have to get the message right first, and then deliver it in the correct tone of voice and using appropriate “body language”. ”

Joe Gillespie: WPDFD was a personal project, not a business venture. Working from home as I do, the distinction between “work” and “leisure” becomes very blurred. I had to do commercial graphic design and multimedia work to make a living. Sometimes, that work could become repetitive and not very interesting. Animation, for instance, is often ten percent creative and ninety percent hard slog. It was often very tempting to lapse into research for a WPDFD article, or to play with some new software package to be able to write a review about it. I had no boss looking over my shoulder so I had to create my own set of disciplines. The way I do that is to do everything to a timetable. Create a time-slot, use it, and move on to the next one.



WDL: You stated in your closing paragraph that having spent the last 40 years in what your parents would have called 'commercial art', you were going to forego the 'commercial' bit and do some 'real' art. So you're an artist. If Andy Warhol painted or sculpted your portrait in context of your Web Design/Communication work, what would it look like?

Joe Gillespie: Andy Warhol gave us new way of looking at things. He showed that by taking a powerful image and repeating it, it became a pattern. That pattern became the subject and took over from the original image thereby devaluing its content. A picture of one electric chair evokes revulsion. Put four of them together and you get a trendy dinning area. I don't think of Warhol as a painter and certainly not a sculptor. If anything, he was an art director. His work was a profound influence on me in my early art college days in the mid-sixties. It was conceptual and made people look with their brains instead of their eyes. Now, the concept of a portrait of me with brains inside my eye sockets instead of eyeballs would seem appropriate with regards to Warhol, but I don't think he would have produced it. It's much more like the work of Magritte. I don't think Warhol's work holds that level of wit.


WDL: Have you ever thought about combining all your editorials into one book and publishing it?

Joe Gillespie: Yes. Several publishers have asked me to do that but I really don't think that a book is the way to show Web pages – you can't “view source”. I think that it's very important to see how something is done in HTML or CSS and that's best done by looking at the markup. If I ever get around to doing “the book” that is supposedly inside everyone, it's not likely to be about Web design. I have a ton of Web design books here. They have very short lives and then they are out of date. I'd like to think that my book had a bit more shelf life.


WDL: What's your opinion about Web Design Library's design? Can you suggest some changes?

Joe Gillespie: As I mentioned before, “design” is about making something best suited to its purpose. When I design something, I investigate what the purpose is, who is doing the communicating and to whom. You have to get the message right first, and then deliver it in the correct tone of voice and using appropriate “body language”. I believe that half of any design job is to establish the correct brief and for most of my career, I have written the brief myself on behalf of my clients and got them to say, “Yes, that's exactly what I want” before I start. Large companies, or small, they never seem to dig deep enough into the who? what? why? of what they are doing and I have to squeeze it out of them. It's more like the way a doctor knows the right questions to ask a patient. He has to listen past the patients' own prognosis to find out what the real problem is. It is wrong to treat symptoms, you have to find out the cause of them.

So, for me to suggest superficial changes to the Web Design Library site with no background information at all would be both pointless and worthless. Who is it aimed at exactly? Is it successful in its current form? If it isn't doing its job, have you tried to find out why?

Sure, everybody has an opinion and many are only too happy to give it. My tastes are fairly extreme and I always make fairly bold statements. What I can say is that if I designed your site, I'd want it to have a stronger brand identity, be more distinctively different from all other sites and use valid HTML and CSS – but if it ain't broke…


WDL: Thank you for your time!