Featured ScrnShots’ User: Chris Spooner Jul 23rd
Chris Spooner is an amazing designer. I’m a big fan of his blog, especially his tutorials (my favorite is the vector pirate tutorial). Chris’ screenshots are always full of vector goodness and he is a great contributor to the ScrnShots community.
If you are even mildly into vector design, Chris is definitely the man to look to for inspiration. Keep up the good work, Chris!
Here’s a bit of an inside look at what Chris does:
Derek: What is your profession?
Chris: I work as a fulltime Graphic / Web Designer for a small design studio based in Sheffield, covering a variety of design work from logos and branding, leaflets and magazine ads through to exhibition graphics and design for web.
I also enjoy taking on personal projects such as my personal design blog; Blog.SpoonGraphics, where I present Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials, design related articles/roundups and the occassional free giveaway which all helps me keep up to date with the web industry and fine tune my creative skills.
Derek: What does a day at work look like for you?
Chris: During the daily 9-5 I undertake whatever projects are on at that particular time, working primarily in Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Dreamweaver depending on the nature of the work. Print work is mostly created on the Mac while my web design tends to be more PC orientated for ease of testing with IE. Answering phone calls, emails and munching ginger biscuits is also part of the daily routine!
Throughout the day I also enjoy browsing the web through my feed reader and StumbleUpon, visiting similar design related blogs and reading up on the latest industry news.
After work at 5pm I spend the early evening working on personal projects at home, which includes generating content for my blog and maintaining my girlfriends driving tuition website (Revolution Driving Tuition). Once she has finished her teaching for the day we often check out the new movie releases at the cinema.
Derek: What are some things that you are working on right now?
Chris: I have just started a new personal project with a developer friend, named myNiteLife (http://www.mynitelife.co.uk). The project is just getting underway but aims to provide the opportunity for Sheffield citizens to rate and review the local night life venues and plan their nights out with a feature of sending out arrangements to their friends.
Otherwise I am constantly trying to generate new content for Blog.SpoonGraphics, I need to organize myself into sitting down and producing some new tutorials!
Derek: How does ScrnShots fit into your workflow?
Chris: As a designer I’m constantly gaining inspiration from everyday findings, particularly on the web where plenty of stunning visuals are served up via design blogs and portfolios. There is always a point sometime in the future when I recall seeing a particular image or website that inspired me, but can never remember how I came across it, ScrnShots is a great way to keep track of these findings. The desktop app is a particularly useful addition which cuts out some of the steps making it much quicker and easier to grab a screenshot without interrupting my workflow.
Derek: What do you use ScrnShots for?
Chris: I find ScrnShots a great way to keep track of design trends and save copies of clever design ideas. During my daily browsing if anything makes me pause for a moment, I’ll quickly snap it and upload it to ScrnShots for reference on another day.
I’ve also found that while browsing through the screenshots of others, I’ll often click through to the website which can then lead to discovering new content and interesting sites I had never come across before. All in all it ties in well with the whole social media scene, giving a place to store and share inspiration online rather than in the ‘Inspiration’ folder that used to sit in the depths of my hard drive!
Derek: This is your time to shine, what else would you like to say?
Chris: I’d just like to give a thumbs up for creating such a cool service, and many thans for the opportunity of being a featured user!