Name:
Michael Schmidt, prefers to be called mschmidt.

Age:
24, will be 25 in november, but feels old in a business where everyone is 18-20.

Location:
Copenhagen, Denmark. And don’t let the Danes fool you - Denmark is really a crappy place to live.

Mac or PC:
As I’ve said before, I will never bow down to the dark side, nor force myself to use a substandard OS. So, it’s MAC all the way.

Site(s):
KALIBER10000, with my partner, the always creative & truly funky Toke Nygaard from Lots of People in Boxes. virus one, which is my own virtual playground (but isn’t updated as often as I’d like it to be). Uploading, where I will premiere a monthly column called random() pretty soon.

The Boss:
Jacob & Morten Elk, two brothers who are complete badasses in both their ways. There’s really a lot of respect between me & them.

Design education:
Nope, none whatsoever. Went to college & studied english & ancient history, though. Not that it ever did much for my design career.

Hunk, spunk or flunk:
Ohhh... either one sounds kind of nasty. Seeing that I’m 1.90, unusually pale, weigh 140 pounds and am bald, i’d say flunk - if flunk means a big skinny maggot-kind of guy =)

Disgusting personal habits:
Well, my girlfriend thinks my smoking is a disgusting habit. And my refusal to stop getting more tattoos. To me, however, these are completely natural things.

Nice personal habits:
Hmmm... I’m nice to kids. I shower a lot.

Hobbies off the net:
Reading. It’ll always be my favorite - doing design doesn’t even come close. Designers who don’t read usually have nothing to say. I also love going out, getting drunk, watching movies, listening to music - the usual suspects, really. Hanging out with Toke, playing Fifa 99 is also a good way to spend your time (and get really pissed because he wins constantly).

Favourite quote:
“grey is the new black” - whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.

What do you know about Australian web designers or graphic designers:
Not that much, I must admit - Australia seems a bit like Denmark in that way. We’re really not that good at profiling ourselves on the net. I have seen some stuff by australian designers, that was truly cool - just not that much of it. But I suspect that’ll change in the future - the whole Nordic thing, for example, is getting kind of old, and people will soon start looking to new countries, and new design styles.

How did you first learn of the internet:
In 95 I got a job as an art director at Denmarks first Internet magazine, on-line. Before that, I hadn’t used the web at all. Unfortunately, seeing that the Internet was such a new thing in Denmark, and nobody was online yet, the magazine died a slow death. So I moved on after about a year, but I’ve been almost constantly online ever since.

What do you like/hate about the net:
I love the way it allows me to communicate with people from all over the world, to keep in touch with my mom who lives in the US, and my sister who’s in England, and the fact that you are constantly bombarded with new & interesting things. The Internet is my biggest source of inspiration, because everything changes so fast - you might see something you like today, but when you go back tomorrow, something else has taken its place.

I hate all the bandwith limitations, the fact that there aren’t really any useable standards, which means you have to spend half your life checking your stuff in different browsers, and on different platforms, just to make sure it works online. I also hate the jumbled mess of totally useless stuff you have to wade through to get to something interesting, and the fact that it’s so easy to copy other peoples’ work. Imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, but I still get mightily pissed off when someone rips of a design I’ve spent a long time working on. Why is it so damn easy in general to do a webpage (and call yourself a webdesigner)? Where’s the quality control button?

What drew you to web design:
The money ;-) Well, not really, seeing that I pay almost 60% in taxes... I don’t know, when I finished high school I was pretty sure I wanted to be involved in some sort of design, I just didn’t know which kind. So I worked a bit for some advertising agencies in Copenhagen, which pretty much sucked. Then I worked at the Internet magazine, and when that folded I was offered a job at an upstart Danish internetagency. I’ve been with that company for almost 3 years now - we were 4 people when I started, now we’re 25. It has been a truly fun ride all the way.

What is your working style (Photoshop, etc):
I work mostly in Photoshop - I’ve given up on that whole vector-clean lines-Illustrator/freehand thing a long time ago. It’s just not my style. Usually when I’m doing stuff for myself, I have a pretty strong idea of what I want to do before I start - but it always mutates a lot when I’m actually working on it. I take a ton of photos with my digital camera (I love that baby), and use that a lot in my work - layered background images are just my thing, baby.

Every web-designer has his (or hers) little box of tricks - and I have mine too. These are just little elements, that I like to use in my work - and which I think are a part of my style. Stuff like the tv-lines, and the dirty noise on top of everything, the use of text as a graphical element, which means you can’t always read it, etc.

When I’m doing web design, I often start doing the html-code and cutting up the images, before the design has been finished. It’s so much easier that way to see what will work on the net - and what won’t.

Do you think that Flash is cool or overused:
Well, Flash as a technology is very cool. But most of the time the way it’s used in website design is just lame. I’m not impressed with gabocorp, or nagafujii, or all the other huge-flying-circles-which-take-10-minutes-to-finish-websites - it doesn’t do a thing for me. I can see that these sites have taken a long time to do, and that the people behind them are accomplished designers & for that they get my respect. But not for the flash work in itself - to me this is just boring.

The only places I’ve seen where Flash works really well is:

1. when someone uses flash to do smooth menu-navigation (that works fast! no, i don’t care if your animation is really cool - when I click a button, I want it to respond immediately!),

2. animated stories - a great example of this are the Ottergirl stories done by emme elephant at her great elephantcloud site - they really spring to life because of the flash,

3. art pieces - like KALIBER10000’s issue 015 which was done by matthew from mwg. This issue had some of the best Flash work I’ve seen anywhere - it was so smooth, and nice, and beautiful that it almost made my eyes water =)

Do you prefer technologically advanced sites or sites with simple but good design:
Both, really. Depends on what I’m looking for. As a designer, I naturally look at the design first - that’s my number one priority. But, after seeing what could be done, technology-wise, for the KALIBER10000 site, I’ve really developed a lot of respect for the sites that use truly advanced technology - I mean, the K10k site is now almost 90% automated, due to some heavy-duty ASP and SQL database-integration. And that saves us a lot of time. But... most of the time, if I don’t like what a site looks like, I move on fast.

Do you have any cool design tips:
Promote yourself! Get your website up & running, even though you may not feel you have that much to say. Because, if you want to get to know other designers, you have to have something to show them.

Favourite sites:
Shit, this is always the part I hate about interviews - because I always give out the same old list of sites, that I like. Ok, let’s see if I can come up with some new ones this time...

-> I love the Test Pilot Collective site, because it really has a very distinct style - and they’ve managed to give the whole website the same look & feel. There’s also lots of randomness going on, which I always like.

-> Praystation, because Joshua knows everyone and does a lot of weird collaborations

-> Mach5design, they have the cutest iconic figures.

-> BORN magazine, this is one of the best design & literature magazines on the net, and always feature a ton of interesting content

-> Fountain, Peter Bruhn is one of my favorite font-designers, and the site is just extremely well-designed, with a smooth swedish flavor.

Favourite designers: (Web or otherwise)
Patrick from pkstyle, niko from ABC and fame from famewhore are probably three of my favorite webdesigners right now - they all have a very individual style, and constantly create very high-quality work. When it comes to printwork I heavily dig the works of Neville Brody and Dave Mckean - Brody because he has such a clean typographic style, and McKean because nobody else does what he does. And then, of course, my friend Toke from Lots of people In boxes, who’s the best at drawing ugly people in weird situations. If I had half his creative energy, I would be one good designer.

Design styles you hate:
Bland, corporate styles. Company websites that have been done on a shoe-string budget, and where the client just doesn’t understand what the point of the Internet is. There’s quite a lot of those types here in Denmark.

Do you think web designers will become the design elite:
Well, I wouldn’t mind if it happened. But it’s going to take some time, I suspect - especially since the budgets for webdesign are so much smaller than those for normal advertising. A lot of advertising agencies still don’t take the web seriously - which may not hurt them much currently, but will kill them in the future. Webdesign is just a design niche right now, but that’ll change - and when webdesign becomes the defacto design style, the current elite will be overthrown. In with the new, out with the old.

Do you see yourself as an influential web designer:
No, I don’t personally (and my girlfriend sure doesn’t - she’s not impressed at all by my work). But it seems like some people do - especially seeing that I’ve started gotten fan mail. Wooho - but it feels pretty weird. It’s happened very fast.

How would you like to be remembered:
As the guy who knew everybody - and who actually answered all the e-mails he got.

Any final comments:
Thanks for letting me speak my mind - and good luck with the site. I’m looking forward to seeing a whole new crop of funky Australian design sites showing up on the net!

Thanks Michael!