What does good web design mean to you?

Simplicity, both aesthetically and functionally. I have seen some incredible sites recently that harness everything we currently know about jQuery, CSS3 and HTML5 but honestly I'm often most impressed by simple websites that eschew snazzy effects in favour of a really neatly, grid-based design that gets you to your target content in the most straight-forward way possible.

You started Kulor, your web design agency, in 2009. What do you think makes it stand out from other design agencies in London?

When I started the agency, I was excited about growing it into a large-ish agency with a sizeable team of designers and developers all housed in a lofty East London warehouse where everyone has their own Aeron. 

In fact the opposite has happened: I have kept the agency small - I have no full-time employees, in favour of working with a tight-knit group of freelancers and other small agencies that I know and trust. This way I am personally, deeply involved in every project: from the sale to the invoicing, with a bit of everything in between. It means I can keep up to speed with the latest technology and design trends without having to focus a great deal on the day-to-day administration that comes with a large agency, all the while having a very flexible lifestyle which is a personal plus.

So it stands out in the fact that I work with different designers depending on the brief, or different developers depending on the requirements, and can mix and match to be flexible. A happy side effect of this reduced overhead means I imagine I can deliver something nice very cost-effectively. 

I did invest in a few Aerons though...

What is your favourite project so far and why - what did it give you the chance to do that you hadn't done before?

My favourite recent client project was the redesign and development of  Dazed Digital. The client was brave and offered next to no constraints on what we could and couldn't do, which in the end delivered an engaging, unusual design for a magazine. It was also great working with Mike Sullivan of Studio Mister in Glasgow, with whom I have worked on subsequent projects, both personal and commercial. It was exciting to work on a project that already has a massive amount of lovely content, which is something that is almost always thought about at the end of a client project, sometimes a day before go live!

It's Nice That, Swiss-Miss, The Fox is Black and then curated design communities like Fffound: all very popular design sites. How is Creative Journal, which you designed and built, unique?

I think that design-oriented blogs and sites are only unique in as much as their curators are. I know the guys behind It's Nice That, and Tina Roth Eisenberg well and their sites very closely reflect their personalities. So all I am trying to do with Creative Journal is just keep track of all the bits and pieces I find on the web that I think are cool: it's as simple as that, so hopefully others might like it and enjoy the content.

I recently redesigned and redeveloped the site to closely reflect the content: each post is a very small amount of text, with a series of up to 10 images, as opposed to a more editorially-led blog like The Fox Is Black. Now the site is essentially an explosion of visuals mixed with a few development experiments I wanted to test out, so it is easy to consume with a very broad range of disciplines and themes.

Do you work with partners on different projects? If so, tell us about them. 

I mentioned Mike Sullivan earlier, but I work with all sorts of people on various different projects depending on the style and complexity. I really enjoy working with Rik Lomas who is an exceptional front-end developer, Gemma Leigh who is about as good a HTML/CSS-smith as you can find, Johanna Lundberg of Åh Studio, the hugely talented Tom Judd and James Chambers of ChambersJudd, Dave Lane from Inventory Studio, Gui Seiz, YCN... the list goes on. And I have some exciting projects coming up whereby I will work with some individuals whose work I have admired for a long time.

What is the biggest issue facing designers on the web today?

Keeping up with the incredibly fast pace of technological developments is incredibly difficult, but exciting at the same time, so I don't think keeping up with the times is a chore. The gradual transition from Flash to Javascript is exciting, and already I have seen some work that makes me feel woefully inadequate as both a developer and designer.

The second issue is the mild panic that everyone seems to be going through right now whereby clients feel the need have some sort of Apple iTunes store presence. I worry that designers are investing an awful lot of time and resources jumping on a design bandwagon (at the behest of their clients) without carefully considering what the right approach to mobile might be. Personally, I'm being a little cautious, and waiting for all the big agencies and publishing brands to do all the expensive experimentation before I decide where to invest my own time and money.

What's your pet like and your pet hate about the global design community?

My pet like is the fact that in almost no other industry as far as I am aware, in the web design and development community people are always willing to share absolutely everything and collaborate as much as possible. But this is directly related to my pet hate, which is where celebrated design and designers have become quite homogenous because certain individuals and aesthetics dominate the web design scene. I'd love to see more variety in the designers and agencies who are given platforms for their work to be celebrated.

What's your opinion of crowdsourcing sites like Crowdspring and 99designs, and product-focussed crowdsourcing ones like Threadless and Spreadshirt - do you consider them fads or will they have a longer-lasting impact?

Spec-work encouraging sites like 99designs have absolutely no place in the design world. That is all I have to say on that.

I do think Threadless *is* fun, and they have created something amazing that has grown into something beyond a fad. But at the same time their success seems to have given permission to other companies to mimic the model, and can often be exploitative and spec-y.

I think the crowdsourcing conversation should only ever be had in the context of medicine, science, and architecture (e.g. Architecture for Humanity).

With so many design conferences the world over, if you could attend only 3, which ones would they be and why?

I try to attend ones that aren't directly related to web design or development, simply because I'm inspired by things that fall outside of my own ability or field of work. I love Behance's 99% (and will be going this year), which has a broad remit of creative business. I thoroughly enjoyed TEDxObserver recently. The level of detail and quality of the event is probably the closet I will ever get to an actual TED event. 

Also, OFFF is superb. I'm going to this year's event in Barcelona, having enjoyed last year's immensely: a mixture of digital media, motion design, illustration, and typography.

I would also attend my own design conference, which is half fantasy, and half something I'm discussing with a few folk, but that's news for another time...

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Thanks, Daniel. We're sure we'll see a lot of interesting stuff from you soon!