Maxime Chillemi
Hello. My name is Maxime Chillemi. I started designing things about 10 years ago and I progressively went professional in UI design and graphic design. I now work as a freelance art director and I’m currently living in Paris.
When your friends or parents ask to you what job do you do, how do you answer?
I think the people I know would describe what I do as : working on design stuff for the internet. Internet and devices are not that much of a sexy thing for most of the people I know, so it’s difficult to keep them interested when you’re explaining them that you are designing user interfaces for websites and applications. Unless I am working on an album cover, I’m trying to sum up as briefly as I can what I’m working on at the moment, afraid to get yawned at haha
What is your background, how did you train?
I started playing with Photoshop and designing interfaces when I was about 12 years old and I’ve mainly been an autodidact since then. I was following some tutorials at first like everybody else, I was experimenting on my own, trying different medias and techniques (interface, photo manipulation, collage, 3D, drawing …). Then I started working on commissioned web design projects for e-commerce websites, companies or blogs, and got technically better year after year practicing on a regular basis.
I studied Multimedia Design at Gobelins the School of the Image for 2 years, it was an “apprenticeship training”, that means I was working one week in a design studio as a junior art director (at Creaktif, based in Paris) and one week at school. It really helped me to put my work into perspective, being surrounded by talented people and working in teams on concrete projects was very inspiring. I learnt a lot during these two years, be it in concept, organization, workflow, design or communication.
What the web can do to make this world a better place? How did the web improve your life (if it did)?
Evidently the web created a new way of communicating, spreading information, and bringing people from all around the world together. It made this world a better place by enabling the emergence of new Medias, services and great initiatives such as open source or crowd funding amongst others. I guess it still has some way to go in order to improve our life and experiences, have an impact on the real world, and do much more than a normalization of shallow life-showcasing and idiotic fancy gadgets. It’s hard to say whether or not the web has improved my life, it has its pros and cons. It made things easier, made new things appear, but it changed our behaviors, made us all dependent and made us all lose an inestimable amount of time.
Can you show us three examples of interface that in your opinion improved human life ?
Light switch, phone and keyboard, amongst many others. Oh what a boring answer.
On quora.com, time ago there was a long discussion in answer to the question “What is the most intuitive interface ever created?”; according to Felipe Rocha it is the nipple, in your opinion instead? (http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-intuitive-interfaces-ever-created)
“Suggesting no training is required to use an interface”. Certainly not a laptop touchpad then.
How is your work day type ?
Until then I’ve never been a full-time freelance designer, I’ve always been working besides my studies. I’ve been doing my best to find time and opportunities to work aside on projects for clients or with friends. So yeah I don’t really have a typical work day, I mainly work at home, at night. I am beginning to work as a full-time freelancer now, so I think I’ll move on to a standard day schedule, with daylight and stuff.
What is the most stimulating and challenging project you have accomplished?
I am currently working on 3 projects that hopefully will be released in a near future. Those project ideas were initiated by friends of mine who are developers, and we’ve been working on it together for some time now. Those are very stimulating because they are self-initiated, we oversee the whole thing and we feel very involved.
Otherwise the most stimulating has been my graduation project Broadn, an online music discovery service. We’ve been working on it for more than a year, and the two developers still have a lot on their plate before it can be online in beta. Unfortunately as time went by we saw a few similar services popping out on the web, but well… Recently, I’ve also been working on a web documentary on the First World War archaeology, I loved it and I’m really looking forward to working on other documentary projects.
What is, among the existing digital services, the one you wanted to do?
Spotify, Quora or Twitter. I would have loved to come up with such ideas and have the opportunity to work on the design of these services.
Many designers commit the mistake of starting a project directly from Photoshop, is there a perfect design method? What is your approach to the creative process?
I need to have in mind what is about to happen in there, so I always need to think on paper, listing pages, contents, functionalities, drawing a pathway, organizing little by little, getting rid of stumbled-over nonsense, mistakes and dead ends. But I think it’s not always a bad idea to start directly in Photoshop or Illustrator- if you have time- to throw quick drafts, intentions of zoning, compositions, atmosphere, navigation, transitions… I wouldn’t consider us, interface designers, as painters, but I think it’s a pretty similar process of trial and error before achieving a final piece. Drafting on Photoshop makes you realize quickly what goes well and what goes wrong. I usually do both at the same time, writing and drawing stuff on paper, then drafting a bit on Photoshop, and then back on paper, and so on. In my opinion there’s no perfect design method no, it’s according to you.
The “design” is an important part of our analogic life. What is the role of the designer in our digital life?
As an analogic designer, the digital designer defines the structure, the usability and the look of something. He tries to find solutions to problems, find answers to needs or create needs in the unnecessary, carrying ergonomics and aesthetics.
Do you believe it is important for a designer to have a deep knowledge of matters as User Experience, Interaction Design, Product Design, and Front-end development?
I think it is necessary for a designer to have some knowledge, or awareness, in the disciplines that surround his work. It’s good to understand how your area of intervention is connected to its surroundings as most of the time you’re working on a project with other people. Understanding their work will surely facilitate teamwork, workflow and every one’s tasks. I don’t believe that much in a deep knowledge you’d learn from books dictating theory and rules, I think we learn about these interrelated matters practicing, alone or with people from these fields.
In which way do you make a difference between User Interface and user experience ?
I would say UI is what is displayed and UX is what is hidden but felt.
What is your relationship with the developers? There are people that have a relationship of continuous confrontation and other of deep friendship, where do you collocate with respect to this question?
They are the main source of deprecation. No, I love to work with developers or with anyone as long as we all manage to listen to each other. We cannot work with anyone. I think we have to find some complementary co-workers, be they project managers, designers or developers. It’s all about fitting tact, personality, expectations, feeling, discussions and processes. And to me the main thing is expectation, even if you don’t get along that much with someone, as long as you have the same goal in mind, the same level of personal investment, you should manage to work hand in hand and carry out projects successfully.
How do you think that your career and job will evolve in the next 5 years?
I have no idea! I’m looking forward to moving from Paris, work on commercial/non-commercial ui & graphic design projects, learning and practicing film and motion design. I hope I’ll manage to combine all these things and figure out something.
A famous quotation of David Carson (noted American graphic designer) says: “Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does”. Will the User Interface Design save the world, before, at the same time, or after the graphic design?
I’d rather rely on Jack Bauer rather than on UI design frankly.
What do you think about Dribbble? Is it a good way to get a job? What’s the best way to find a job as designer?
I think Dribbble is a good platform for inspiration, there are some really talented people in here, even if it’s merely public graphic masturbation and visit-my-page praise, it has created some sort of a group dynamic, encouraging people to improve and innovate, which also lead us to homogenization and style-mimicking legitimization. If you are in the top users it is a great way to get a job, yes. As with everything, and unfortunately, the best way is relation, relation, relation.
What book would you advice to a Junior Designer?
I’m a junior designer, so I’m listening!
Always as far as advices: what tools for the design? What tools for the projects management?
I’m not so fancy about cutting-edge design tools and project management services. I use Photoshop, Illustrator, Google Docs, Dropbox and Evernote, and I think sticking with one of the thousand project management services out there is a good thing (Basecamp, Wunderlist, Asana or Jira for instance)
Dribbble : https://dribbble.com/maximechillemi
Website : http://www.maximechillemi.com
FRONTIERSX November 12–13th, 2015, Milan, Italy
As the meeting point of design, technology and everything interactive, this year we’ll dive deep through innovation and disruption in Banking, Health and Retail industries.
