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3 Questions for Bryan Veloso
Published 2 years ago, mid-April under Design, Three Questions
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I’m really excited to kick off a series of short interviews called Three Questions with an interview I conducted with Bryan Veloso of Revyver. Over the next few months I’ll be asking three questions to several designers, artists, and bloggers I respect from around the web.
Bryan is an award-winning designer with a portfolio that includes work for Flock, Facebook, and Mashable. He’s the author of Avalonstar, a blog that spans his personal and professional life—it’s currently in hiatus until May 1st, so we’re all eagerly awaiting its return. Bryan is quite busy these days—he runs Revyver, he co-hosts Live From the 101, he’s a member of the newly-formed Sidebar Creative, he organizes some amazing events with his fiancée Jen, and he’s been a speaker at a number of web conferences.
Read on for Bryan’s thoughts on working with a team, mixing his personal life and his blogging life, and the future of Avalonstar.
Three Questions for Bryan Veloso
Rob Goodlatte
You recently started up Sidebar Creative alongside some pretty talented people. How has working remotely with a team affected your design workflow and how you deal with your clients?
Bryan Veloso
The experience has actually taught me a lot. I’ve worked on teams both in an office and remotely, but venturing out with 3 people you deeply admire and respect presents a whole different challenge. If anything, I’m the newbie of the group when it comes to things such as client interaction and the design process. I’ve found that my process is the most informal out of the four of us. It’s not a bad thing per-se, I’m just a bit green. I’ve found that I’ve had to adapt in more ways than one, but through that I’ve refined my own techniques. For example, I never used to take wireframing as seriously as I do now. But I’ve found it’s a really helpful tool, especially when you don’t have a clear direction in your head, which is what usually happens to me. I’d still rather jump right into designing whenever I have the chance.
Since Sidebar isn’t our full-time job (yet), we only interact on a semi-regular basis about the inquiries we get, I’m sure that’ll change once our focuses start to converge and that’ll open up a whole new can of worms.
Rob
You put a lot of personality and passion into your writing on Avalonstar. How and where do you draw the line between your personal life and your blog?
Bryan
I had a good conversation about this with a dear friend of mine a few days ago, and this is a subject close to my heart. I do put a lot of personality into Avalonstar and there are many reasons for that not the least of which is the relationship to that domain. It’s like family to me, and laugh if you want to, but I can honestly say that’s true. The placement of personality and passion is intentional. I want you to know who I am, I want you to know what I’m like and where I’ve come from. I’m going to keep doing that, and if something bad happens, then I’ll live with the consequences of my actions. It’s only the right thing to do, in my mind at least.
A value I’ve tried to include in my ethos lately is transparency —no bullshit.
When it comes to drawing a line between my personal life and my blog, it’s a moving target and the line is starting to blur as well. A value I’ve tried to include in my ethos lately is transparency—no bullshit. But with the events of the past few weeks, there are things I just either don’t want to talk about or things that are nobody’s business but my own. It’s really the feeling that I get when I start to write, “is this something people really care about?” or “is this something I really want to be telling people?” Other than that, I just let it go. There’s no reason for me to hold back and I think I’m doing my readers a disservice if I do.
Rob
What can we expect for the upcoming re-release of Avalonstar? And more importantly, will there still be eggrolls?
Bryan
Ah, the question of the night. Somehow I knew this would be in here. Well, let’s see. I’m at the point where I don’t want people to expect too much, because I don’t want to underwhelm. But at the same time, by the time Avalonstar comes back up, it would have been over a month since it was taken down.
All-in-all, I’m starting from scratch.
This version will serve as a new beginning for me, I can say that much. I mean, I even played with the phoenix emblem for the first time since I created it, so I’m really trying to not hold anything back. I’ve gone through the trouble of learning a new programming language, not only for the experience, but for the satisfaction of knowing that everything was done by me. I think that’s just a part of my being. I’ll be including a lot of the things I talked about in the final days of the previous version. Again, you only get points if you remember as I’m not trying to disclose much. I’ve given myself different ways to present information and a lot of new information to present, once I get to presenting it. Whether I’m bringing the old content back is still up in internal debate, but it will give me the chance to refine some of the old writings I’ve done.
All-in-all, I’m starting from scratch. My mind went a little wonky in the paragraph above, but I guess you’ll have to wait for May 1st. Hopefully I’ll be able to hit that date. As for the eggrolls, well. I do like other types of chinese food, who knows? ;)
Go On, Say It!
Great interview. Short and to the point. Can’t wait to see what Bryan has in store for us all :)
Ah, April first joke that people took too seriously, so had to carry it through? May 1st reboot for the relaunch? Bah who knows =) take it light!
Avalonstar going offline was not related to April Fools in any way, even remotely.
A great read even if it is only for those ‘in the know’.
I feel like i understand his methods a bit more now, though, reading about his experiences with wireframes.
Interesting topic the ‘blurring of the lines’. I think the more we all move forward in our careers (and online personas), the more this topic (as well as the dilemma) presents itself.
Not yet with me, though, mind you. I’m merely a spectator. :)
Great job with your webdesign as with the ever-relevant interview/post.
Indeed, good stuff Rob. Perfect timing too. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s wondering what Bryan’s been up to and how things have been going with him.
Now, I’m crazy jealous every time I hear of someone redesigning for May 1. Not that I would take part in the CSS Reboot now, but still.
Being a geek at heart, I’m most intrigued by, “I’ve gone through the trouble of learning a new programming language…” Did he happen to metion what new language he learned?
Well, to answer my own question — and in case anyone out there was interested as well — he’s written/writing his new site in Django. Way to go Bryan! I Django.
[...] I owe a lot to the CSS reboot. Without that traffic surge in May ‘06 I doubt I could have ever received as much online attention as I did. Yet I failed to maintain that audience. I depended far too much on an audience coming from design gallery sites, the css reboot, and digg. My audience was, and remains, very fleeting—people come for the design and leave for the lack of content. But hey, I’m a designer—not a writer. I’m working on improving that—through interviews with other designers, and focusing my writing on design topics rather than ethical inquiry. [...]