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Ladies and gentlemen, It gives us great pleasure to reintroduce
you to graphic designer, author, user group pundit, web mentor, and all-round publishing/computer
celebrity... Robin Williams |
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Robin: I'm looking forward to it, Fred... I have the perfect hat!
UGNN: Robin, you're an officer and
activist in the user group community. Your group, the Santa Fe MUG won the 1996
BEST Web Site Award for user groups. What's your favorite involvement with the
user group community?
Robin:
I lead a beginners' group in my MUG, and I do workshops as fundraisers for
user groups around the country that ask me to, workshops like web design or regular
design for non-designers or font technology.
__ I love user groups. I wish I had time to write a
column that would be specifically for user group newsletters--I have a couple of
concepts in mind. Maybe in January, when I get all this other stuff under control.
[ed: we'll see what we can do about that!]
UGNN: Do you think the user group community
will continue to impact the computer industry?
Robin:
The computer industry would be foolish to ignore us.
UGNN: Where do you think the "personal
pages" thing will go?
Robin:
All over the place--what a fun thing! In the category of "personal pages"
I would include kids at school making pages for themselves or their schools, family
web sites, class reunion sites, personal fetish sites, high school rock band sites,
sites where you can publish your own writing or philosophy or theories or hobbies,
etc. etc. etc.
__ The biggest problem with it is that it's so much
fun to make web sites and as you build it you think of more and more things you want
to put on it, so it becomes a never-ending process and you stop cooking dinner or
feeding the dogs.
UGNN: In terms of high-bracket web design,
what initial visual clues do you get when arriving on a new (as yet undiscovered)
web page that tells you "this is going to be good!"?
Robin:
Clean, clear communication. Uncluttered. Not a bunch of fancy stuff that is
obviously the programmer's/designer's ego on stage.
__ I shouldn't have to figure out how to navigate, nor
what the site is about. I shouldn't have to wait for all the frufru stuff to load.
I have the most respect for designers who understand the medium and utilize it, rather
than try to make it do things it's not quite ready for.
__ There is the same problem in print, where many high-end
designers get so full of their own artsy-fartsy solutions they forget that the point
is to sell the dogfood. (I'm referring to this award-winning design about 15 years
ago--it was for a dogfood package. It was gorgeous--sleek, rich maroon colors, minimal,
and it won lots of design awards. But no one bought the dogfood because it didn't
look like dogfood.)
__ Don't ever forget the purpose of the communication
you are creating. K-Mart spends a lot of money to make their stores look cheesy.
The stores don't look the way they do because the owners of K-Mart can't figure out
how to make them look like Saks--they don't want them to look like Saks. Design
for your market, not for you, and don't forget that your entire market on the web
is using a browser.
UGNN: What features do you dislike most
about web pages these days?
Robin:
Don't make me scroll sideways.
__ I set my browser window [on my 20-inch monitor] at
640 x 460 (which allows about 20 pixels for the menu bar) and I leave it there. If
I have to scroll sideways, I'm instantly crabby about the web site. I want one-size
surfing. Don't ever tell me to set my browser window at a certain width, to change
my font default, or to change my monitor resolution. And don't make me wait too long.
__ The most intelligently designed pages accept the
current limitations of the web and work within them. A good designer can always manage
to create a dynamic page within limitations.
UGNN: Any favorite WEB haunts you'd
like to share?
Robin:
Oh, I'm always poking around the search engines to see the new developments
they're constantly making so I can tell people about them. I write a column in the
local paper about what Santa Feans are doing on the Internet, so I spend several
hours a week on New Mexican sites. There's quite a lot happening here. I recently
discovered The Mining Company (a different sort of search engine, http://www.miningco.com)
and have been enjoying that greatly. I wander around and see how people are designing
things, good and bad. But there aren't too many sites I return to over and over again
(except the ones about the Shakespeare authorship question).
UGNN: What's up with ROBIN? New books?
Speaking engagements?
Robin:
Always a new book! The Non-Designer's
Web Book just came out and I think it's the
best book I've ever done. John Tollett, who illustrated A Blip in the continuum,
wrote it with me. He's a professional web developer (http://www.westpecos.com) with
30 years' of design and illustration experience, and he added so much to the book.
He's the reason it's the best. I love the book--it's the book I wish I had when I
first started working with web stuff. Everyone should read that book first, and then
read every book by Lynda Weinman.
__ My speaking schedule is posted on my web site, http://www.ratz.com/robin/schedule.html.
I'm hoping not to travel so much next year--at least not to cities for speaking engagements.
I'd like to spend a month on the beach in Greece with a PowerBook and retsina.
And of course, Beyond The Little Mac Book came out a few months ago--it's
an intermediate user's version of The Little Mac Book, written by Steve Broback
and produced by me. And right now I'm working on updating The Little Mac Book
to OS8 in time for Macworld in January. I have to update the font book and Jargon,
the computer dictionary.
__ And I'm editing and producing a couple of other books
that other people are writing, books that I think are needed but that I don't feel
qualified to write.
WD&R: Robin, in closing, what most
important tidbit of advice can you pass along to our readers today?
Robin:
You can't let the seeds stop you from enjoying the watermelon.
And your attitude is your life. ;)
We want to thank Robin Williams very much for
visiting with us today! Sis very busy, but we think you'll enjoy Robin
on the web very much! Visit her soon, and tell her you read her interview in
the User Group Network!
See: Robin at the 1997 UG Academy Awards!
.
URLs Mentioned:
* Robin's Speaking Schedult: My speaking schedule
is posted on my web site, http://www.ratz.com/robin/schedule.html
* John Tollett's http://www.westpecos.com,
* The Mining Company, http://www.miningco.com
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