Designer Interview: Matthew Smith
by Jonathan Longnecker | March 9, 2010 | Filed in Design, Interviews | 0 Comments
Fresh out of SXSW, Squaredeye's Matthew Smith found the time to talk about his favorite music and why he thinks it's so important to let music inspire you while you design. Thanks for recommending Apparat and Milosh, Matt. I need a bigger music budget!
Matthew Smith
Matthew Smith is the main guy at SquaredEye and an experienced Creative Director and designer for top companies, with a BA in Fine Arts, a two-year stint in visual art in the UK, and apprenticeship at the RMAC. Matthew also speaks and writes for the web design community (AIGA SC, Digital Web, et al.). When he's not designing, you'll find him building treehouses for his two young boys or sipping on a fine Belgian Tripel with his wife Amy.
What are you listening to right now?
- Ashley Prior Sets (from IHOP.org/theprayerroom)
- Apparat
- Milosh
- Tycho
Could you share your thoughts on the link between creating something and and having music be a part of that? Is it important to your process or distracting?
Music isn't a medium of utility, its a medium of beauty. Its important that as we design we are operating with both sides of our brains turned on. The best design is initiated by the more logical left brain, but enhanced and awakened by the more creative right brain. Music helps us do that. In some ways, its also appropriate to approach music the way actors use method-acting techniques. If I'm designing a high class elegant site I might throw down some mozart, or even Brian Eno, but if I'm working on a farm site, I'll listen to some Old Crow Medicine Show and get my blue grass on.
Headphones or speakers? What kind?
Bose On-Ear do me well.
Do you remember the first album you picked up at a CD store based solely on the cover?
Red Hot Chilli Peppers. My mom picked it out because she likes mexican food.
You talk a lot about details in your design work, are there any songs or albums that have impressed you with their details lately?
Explosions in the Sky : The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place – Very well composed. The details add up to a perfect whole.
