Interview: Macclesfield Web Designer Marc Remblance
Name Marc Remblance
Business First Base Design (freelance web designer/developer)
Location Macclesfield
Website Website Design Manchester
Describe yourself in three words… Hard working (hmm, maybe that’s two?), loyal, passionate
Tell us about your background… Well I was born, that was a start, and from an early age I loved sketching, mainly landscapes and cartoon characters (bit of gap between the two styles I know), I used to love creating my own comics, and even won a cheeky little award in High school for a Road Safety brochure for my local council, mired somewhat by being sent to the headmasters office the same year for drawing a collection of condom styled cartoon characters (The Condom Gang) in my Science lesson. The Art teacher, on the other hand found them funny, and inventive and said I’d go far!
After that I moved onto college and trained as a Graphic Designer, and worked primarily in this field for many years, working for companies such as EMI, Bostik and The Guardian Media Group. Ahh the early days of pencils, a scalpel and spray mount, and working on old-style Macs with screens the size of my mobile phones!
I eventually transitioned into web design about 2002, initially very much a part-time thing, and more of a hobby than anything, but something that grasped me as I saw my designs become interactive and animated on the screen in front of me (even on a 56K dial up connection). Since then I have had the pleasure of working on a massively varied amount of projects, and have created work for clients such as The Office of Fair Trading, National Tyres, Yamaha and Steroplast, and the opportunity to work alongside some really great people, and thoroughly enjoying what I do, which is a result!
Tell us about what you do! Currently the services I provide (primarily) are front-end web development services, so Interface design and XHTML/CSS coding are my specialities. I enjoy working with CMS platforms such as Wordpress and Expression Engine. Most projects I work on for my clients are just myself from start to finish, on a few occasions I will work alongside other agencies on projects and just bring my design skills to the table. This always mixes things up and keeps it interesting.
What inspired you to launch your own business? As I mentioned before I started the web design as very much a side project of my own, and it has only been in recent years that it has gathered enough momentum to work as a viable business. Mainly down to contacts from the past enquiring, and the good old word of mouth and referrals.
But getting back to the original question, It wasn’t to fill a gap in the market, because there’s a hell of a lot of other freelancers out there now! It was the opportunity to work on projects that you enjoyed doing, not cherrypick, as the bills need to be paid, but at least have the final say on the type of projects that you could be working on, things that would ‘float my boat’ so to speak in a creative way.
What’s your proudest moment so far? In all honesty, breaking out on my own, becoming your own boss to an extent, free from the shackles of the 9-5 grind (more like 9am-2am). Seeing this little baby that you created nurture and grow, and getting the odd comment like ‘that looks amazing’ always helps along the way.
And your greatest project? Could I pin that down to just one project? Probably not. If you are looking at what gave me a feeling of purpose, and why I enjoy doing what I do then two projects that come to mind are two which I offered my services for free. One of those was for a local play centre for kids with special needs, of which there are not an abundance of in the UK, so it was good to bring more attention to this and give a little back to the local community.
Who or what inspires you? My old Art teacher (used to drive an awesome, orange RS2000), too many designers to mention that inspire, but a little mention must go out to the late, great Saul Bass whos work to this day still rocks my little design socks! Oh and a designer called Mike Kus who works at Carsonified.
What do you hope to be doing in five years time? The same thing, but BIGGER! Working for great clients, and great people, and enjoying firing up my machine every morning! And possibly taking the odd weekend off!
When you aren’t running your creative business, you are…? Bored! Only kidding, I enjoy spending time with my 3 kids (Josh, Adam and Sophie-Mae), as long as you keep them away from the shops! I’m a bit of a Poker fan also, that’s not to say I’m any good, I just enjoy playing it quite often. I’m also a fan of visiting old places and museums and the like (damn that must be an age thing). A few cheeky pints is also a big favourite of mine, that Is where some (off the wall) design ideas have been hatched in the past. I do like a good band as well?!? Public Enemy at the Manchester Academy was a personal favourite, took me back to my youth, and gave me a chance to pop on my old-skool Troop trainers and Raiders baseball cap, only kidding, I wore a suit and dickie bow!
Anything exciting ongoing or in the pipeline? Currently working on a project with the fantastic Tom Cowan @BoomerangPR for a chain of Estate Agents, that is going to grab estate agent websites kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and also working on some packaging design for a range of products that will be hitting the shelves at Boots very soon.
Finally, any words of wisdom to other creative people? Keep learning, read, read and read up some more on what’s happening now in the industry, always keep up to date and with your finger on the pulse. Build up great contacts and relationships with other people in your field. Always be polite even if a client is driving you nuts, and give 100% to every project that you work on, as most of your work will probably come via client referral, and that person tells one person, they tell two more, you know the drill! And try to enjoy what you do everyday, it’s the best industry to be in.
