Hey Jonathan, thanks for taking the time out to talk to the community. Why don’t we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Jonathan Snook based out of Ottawa, Canada. I'm formerly a freelance designer/developer who has recently joined the crew at Squarespace.com to work on front-end design and development. The work is right up my alley as I thoroughly enjoy problem solving and designing user interfaces.
What got you started in design?
Web design in general came out of my desire to build personal sites on the web, way back in the mid to late 90s. However, my trend into more user interface design has come from my development work. Graphic designers would craft beautiful designs for client-facing portions of a web site but the administration tools were sorely lacking and under-appreciated. I always felt they needed to be intuitive and pleasing, so as to make people want to take care of their sites.
Do you have any educational experience?
I don't have any formal education since I've left high school. I've done best learning on my own by using books and online resources. The best way for me to learn is just by doing. What's the problem and how do I solve it? Once I've learned how to answer those questions, I can move onto the next problem. It's how I continue to learn and grow today.
What are your inspirations?
Inspiration comes from many places. Ultimately, much of it comes from the design community. I [BLOCKED] people solve certain problems and I look to integrate those solutions into my own work.
What do you have planned for the future?
I take it all one-step at a time and don't normally plan too much into the future. Life changes too fast to worry about where it's going.
Tell me about your experiences as a freelancer…why the change?
Freelancing was a freeing and rewarding experience. It was also a great learning experience and allowed me to understand myself better than I ever did before. One of the key things I've discovered is that I'm just not that great of a businessperson. I'm not very [BLOCKED] financial side of things and having to go after clients for payment was frustrating. When Squarespace came along, it offered up the best of both worlds. It allowed me to continue to work from home, to work on a cool project and help it evolve, and to know that I'd have a reliable income.
How does it feel to have co-authored 2 (and a half) books, and have gotten this far?
Having my name on a book is a great sense of pride. It's been extremely rewarding — despite all the pain that goes into writing a book. Likewise, I'm very happy to be where I am right now. There's really not much that I can complain about.
What do you think is the importance of sharing your tips through a blog online with others?
Most importantly, it's a resource for myself. If I've run into a problem, then I want to remember that. I need some way to refer to that. The great thing about that is that it has become a resource for other people. That has had some nice side effects like having other people see me as an expert in my field. That led to the books, to the speaking, and to the opportunity to work with great people around the world. I'm very grateful for the success that has come as a direct and indirect result of running the blog.
Do you have any tips for other designers within the community?
Enjoy what you're doing and don't stop learning.
