*Please pardon the un-styled mess why I am rethinking and re-designing my blog!*
I recently had the chance to interview Collis Ta’eed who runs Envato – quite possibly the coolest company in the world! In this interview Collis answers tough questions about bananas, hex colors and emerging web technologies.
Yes! Growing up in Papua New Guinea, bananas were plentiful and various. We even had fried and cooked bananas (though they are a different sort of banana).
My best friend was a web designer and he always looked like he enjoyed his work more than I did (I was studying maths at the time). Although people like to make remarks about grass being greener on the other side, in this case it really was a lot greener, so I’ve never regretted switching.
Definitely Psdtuts+ (http://psd.tutsplus.com). That site started out as a tiny side project and just escalated like crazy. I’ve always loved Photoshop so it’s pretty cool to work on a site that encourages other people to love it too!!
99% online. My job involves a lot of perusing of design sites and I wind up getting a lot of inspiration from them. I very much love blogs like Smashing Magazine or BuildInternet (a site I just recently came across!) as well as CSS galleries like WebCreme and CSSRemix.
<q> Because it’s my favourite letter! Meanwhiles in case you don’t believe this is actually an HTML tag: http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_q.asp
For the last year I’ve been trekking around the world working from different locations. But just two days ago my wife Cyan and I finally returned home to Australia. It was a great year but I must confess I’m more than a little happy not to have to live out a suitcase anymore During our travels we stayed in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, the US and Paris. They were all fantastic, but I think Hong Kong was my favourite, that city is just so alive!
My first job as a designer was for a little company (at the time it was just my boss and me) in Sydney called Cyrius (http://cyrius.com.au). Working in a little company was really great because I got to do a bit of everything. I met clients, learned SEO, reprogrammed a site in ASP (which I didn’t actually know until then) and of course designed and built lots of websites. Looking back some of my designs were not so great, but they did the job and I loved every minute of it!
Oh my, definitely Zapf Dingbats … just kidding, I would have to say Helvetica, anything else would be rather painful I imagine.
#111111, it’s such a cool dark grey. I love it!
You know I’ve always wished I knew Ruby on Rails. But these days I get less and less time for development, in fact recently I handed over my last HTML/CSS work to a new employee and now I only do Photoshop design.
Absolutely! The best thing I ever did when learning to design was to spend copious amounts of time in my local Borders reading through all the expensive books on design and typography which I couldn’t afford to buy. There’s so much great information which isn’t yet available online, in fact with books often there’s a lot to learn simply by looking at how the books themeselves have been designed!
[18] Comments
Posted in color, design, Graphic Design, Interviews, Web 2.OH, Web Design
[...] 10 Questions With Collis Ta’eed* | The Design O'Blog Great interview with Collis Ta'eed !! [...]
[...] 10 Questions With Collis Ta’eed* [...]
[...] 10 Questions With Collis Ta’eed* [...]
[...] Here’s a great interview he did last month. He built a digital empire doing stuff he loves. He travles around the world. He gets to work with smart and awesome people. [...]
[...] Collis Ta’eed on The Design O’Blog [...]
[...] Collis Ta’eed on The Design O’Blog [...]
[...] Interview Link Workspace Link [...]
Subscribe by rss, email, or in iTunes!
Benjamin Reid says:
Great interview and not the bog standard questions either! I envy how much this guy has traveled while still working and producing great things. Hats off to him.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:53 am
joyoge designers' bookmark says:
nice interview thanks for tips..
April 6th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Zach Dunn says:
You know, I’m absolutely flattered that Collis gave Build Internet! a shout-out. I’m glad to hear you like it!
Also, all around great interview. You really know how to get the good ones Niki!
April 6th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Dylan says:
I believe you meant: “What piqued your interest?”
April 6th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Laura-Jane says:
Great interview and nice companion images, Niki. I always like to know what the Ta’eeds are up to. Great post!
April 6th, 2009 at 9:20 am
twe4ked says:
Interesting interview, nice to get away from some of the standard questions.
Cheers.
#111111 = WIN!
April 6th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Japh says:
Excellent interview
I think Collis might be my new hero/inspirational/aspirational role-model…
April 6th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
VertigoSFX says:
Collis is my hero…the way he has quickly grown into such a huge company is really inspiring. I also love the advice for question 10. Very few people say just to go in and read books at the bookstore…most of it is either like “read tutorials or search online”. Nice to see the old fashioned book still gets the job done.
April 7th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Jason says:
Since first coming across PSD Tuts, I have followed Collis and his Envato team through their many website launches. I’m proud to be an author at Graphic River and Audio Jungle.
Congrats to your success, Collis and Cyan!
April 13th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Stefan Sojka says:
Hey,
I just checked my stats and saw a bunch of clicks coming through to my site from this article – I’m the dude who Collis worked for in his first job. He was always going to be a great success – a total legend from the very beginning – brilliant at everything he did.
Collis – when is your empire going to crumble and you come crawling back to me??!!
hehehe
Seriously, he really made a good decision to spend some time working with me – we had such a variety of work and experiences, as well as heaps of great times talking about everything, it was very clear he was gaining a good experiential foundation for his booming career that followed.
See you at “you know who’s” wedding in September, Collis!
Cheers,
Stefan a.k.a. Cyrius01
April 30th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
ceejay90 says:
This information is really interesting for me and I like your way as you describe it. I hope you will share more informative post in future. http://www.findkcb.com/kentucky-newspapers/” target=”_blank”>Lexington Kentucky Newspapers
October 27th, 2011 at 10:47 pm