Say Hello to Brandon Morrison of TFnS Web Design

Brandon Morrison is the mastermind behind Thanks For not Suing Web Design. TFnS is a web design boutique that specializes in creating custom web sites with aesthetics and usability as a high priority.

He is a proven Drupal Master, who took, Resilient Furniture, a completely HTML driven eCommerce site and converted to a functional yet flashy Drupal powered site.

His company also works with Flash, jQuery, Wordpress, and Smarty. We had the opportunity to interview Mr. Morrison and here is what he had to say.

Brandon, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

I graduated college with a degree in Media Design from Middle Tennessee State University. My education was mostly print design, but I took a couple of web classes and became more interested in web design. After graduating, I started work at The Commercial Appeal, which is a mid-sized newspaper located in Memphis, TN as a web developer. While there, I spent a lot of time fleshing out the logistics of special projects that the paper produced online, including a couple of map mashups, several blogs, and some interesting uses for boring things like election data and the like.

After a two year stint in Memphis, I moved up to South Bend, IN with my fiancée Jessica (who is a graduate student at Notre Dame) and started TFnS Web Design. I primarily work with small to mid-sized businesses improve their standing in the online world by creating easy to use, engaging web sites, although I'd love to hear from indie bands who want a spruced up web site...

I'm sure any band would benefit from having a site designed by Thanks For not Suing. Let's talk programs. What are your favorite programs and mediums to use?

Well, I'm an Apple fan first and foremost. For graphics, I'm a big fan of Photoshop and Illustrator. I do my Actionscript coding in the Flash IDE, but I do most of my code writing in Coda. For CMS's, I work mostly with Drupal and Wordpress, although I've been known to venture into other projects from time to time.

Do you have a special "process" when you start a new project?

Not particularly. I have been trying to streamline my process, especially after observing the Drupal.org redesign process by Mark Boulton. I've found with the last couple of projects that I've been involved in that splitting up the design process into a "usability" pass and a "graphical" pass. I've been hampered before while designing interfaces with picking color choices and playing with drop shadows when I really should have been paying attention to the overall structure of the site.

Are there any designers, artists, or creative people you look up to? Who are you inspired by?

I try to stay fairly current with web design trends by following different podcasts and blogs. I'm a big fan of Boagworld and of Paul Boag himself. I try to stay on top of what the Lullabots are doing, since they're usually ahead of the curve in Drupal-world.

Outside of that, I'm a huge fan of Art Nouveau posters, so I'm a sucker for Mucha, Chéret, Toulouse-Lautrec and everybody else involved in that time period. Like every other person who's ever looked at graphic design seriously, I'm a fan of Paul Rand's work with logo design.

I've also had the chance to work with some very talented designers/artists worth mentioning. Alan Laidlaw is an illustrator/web designer who's work has some great personality to it that's definitely worth checking out.

What does a typical day at work involve for you?

My typical day usually involves distracting my cat and fiancée long enough for me to get a few hours of work in during the day. ;-)

Seriously, though, my day's not all that different from my old office job. I get up, answer emails, code a little bit, and try not to get too distracted by the Internet. The biggest difference is that I have to play salesman and homemaker on top of everything else. Typically, I try to keep 9-5 office hours to preserve my sanity. I've done a few all-nighters, and they're definitely not as easy as I remember them being in college.

Okay, aside from distracting your cat or pulling an all-nighter, what's the best thing and the worst thing about your job?

I actually have the same answer for both. The best and worst thing about my job as a freelance web developer is that I am completely in control of every decision that I make. It's liberating to know that I don't have to worry about getting stuck with a bad project or not having to deal with annoying coworkers. At the same time, if I don't get paid for a month, there's only one person to blame.

As a designer/developer, what led you to Drupal?

Back when I was a web editor for my student newspaper at MTSU, we briefly considered creating a social network a la Daily Kos for the student body. Since I was the only one on staff with any real computer science background, I was responsible for figuring out how to go about creating the site. After exploring a few options, I found that Drupal was the easiest for me to set up and get going for the project. The project never took off, but Drupal has always been on my radar ever since.

How long have you been using Drupal?

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm fairly certain that the first install of Drupal I ever tried was 4.5. In other news, I feel old...

As a designer/developer of Drupal what features or modules would you like to see integrated in the future?

I'm really excited to see how far Drupal has come over the past few years. I don't think there's really anything out there on the web that you can't at the very least somewhat mimic with Drupal. There are some exciting projects out there to help in that regard, including Lullabot's Form Builder, Trellon's Interface Module, and the integration of Fields (and potentially Views) into Drupal 7. If all three of those projects mature enough when 7 comes out, we'll potentially have one of the most flexible GUI-driven CMS's out there.

That being said, I'd love to see the default administration setup undergo some fairly major usability changes. Out of the box, Drupal's admin doesn't really give a very good overview of what's going on with the site. I've always been a big fan of Wordpress's admin, especially their dashboard. With their recent admin redesign, they've really set the bar high for other CMS's to provide their users with a useful, functioning administration package.

I agree, Drupal has come along way and if they could do a redesign of the administrator tools it would be untouchable.

But what about dreams - what would be your dream project or dream job?

Outside of web development, one of my biggest passions is news, so I'm always up for a project that involves connecting people to the world around them. I'm also a big music fan, so I'd love to work on a web site for a good band. Sorry, no screamo bands...

And last but certainly not least, what advice would you give other aspiring designers and developers?

To paraphrase the great philosophers Jimmy Eat World, don't worry about what the bitter hearts are going to say. Don't take yourself too seriously. It's easy to get caught up with trying to outdo everybody in the market and be super-competitive. If you're good at what you do and you're passionate about it, people are going to notice and you'll be successful.

Or not, either way...

Great advice. Thanks for the interview Brandon!

To check out more of Brandon Morrison and TFnS Web Design visit:thanksfornotsuing.com

You can also check out a great article that Brandon wrote about integrating Drupal with Flash. Click on the image below to read it now.