Livio Joseph Kujur is a web designer, who started his career in the world of web in 1997. He started working as a designer when web designing was itself peeping at the horizon in India. Presently, he is working on his own created community website, Joharadivasi.

Over the course of an email interview, he elaborated on his beginnings in the arena of web and various intricacies of web technology very minutely, the conversation goes as...

1. Talking about your website, well, it’s really a cool networking site, now here I’d like to ask, when did the idea for launching such a site hit you? And how much traffic are you able to pull from it?

Livio: I started my career as a web designer back in October 1997. I wanted to create a web presence for our Adivasi Community from Assam (hailing from Jharkhand) but slowly it has changed to All Jharkhandi Adivasi Community Website.

I have started the site as a sub domain at a free hosting company. Since the free hosting company pushed lots of pop-up advertisements, I finally decided to purchase my own domain JOHARADIVASI.COM and launched it on 26 March, 2001. Now I have bought another domain and changed the website address to JOHARADIVASI.ORG as the site is of more of a non-profit nature.

Today Joharadivasi has become the most visited adivasi community website. This site provides Discussion Forum, Messages, News and Articles sent by our people and also Adivasi eFriends which is doing extremely well.

This is community service I am doing to bring our people under one umbrella to exchange views and share news, articles, messages etc.

2. What is innovation to you - design, technology or the creative processes itself?

Livio: I work as a web designer for an online directory Teleservices, and often I am asked to come up with innovative ideas for the website. Now how do we come out with innovative ideas... this is where creative process is used and then the technology which is followed by design according to the technology that is going to be implemented. That is what I understood of the question above.

3. How are new designs approaches, such as Rich Internet Applications and AJAX, changing, how we think about our sites’ visual design? Are there new challenges?

Livio: There are new challenges every day. Always when I design and develop website I do not forget ‘Never use technology for technology sake’. Before using any Internet application it is good to ask oneself, how is it going to help the site visitor? If Rich Internet Application and AJAX is a must for the website then we must use it with the explanation how the site functions.

A well designed website should be informative as well as a creative product without forgetting the common objective of the web - to provide universal accessibility.

4. Have we gotten any better at improving the usability of our sites for international users? And, is web 2.0 aiding or impeding site usability for international audiences?

Livio: User friendly is what every surfer look for. Though English is an International Business Language and if we are targeting the globe it is wise to provide with language tool to switch to different languages. The place where I work, people use the French language and always wish to have a website only in French and that’s how we lose 8/10 of the world population to visit the website. Or say for example if I visit a website which is only in Chinese language with important information, will it serve any value to me?

Web 2.0 is aiding site usability, as it has become open communication and freedom to share. Take for example blogs, where people share their views and receive comments from anyone, sharing pictures in Flickr uploading clips in Youtube etc.

5. You received Golden Web Award (2003- 2004), what was this for and how has this kind of recognition benefited your career?

Livio: Oh that was long back... I had received this award for my personal online profile which doesn’t exists today... am attaching an image to see it.

This award valued a lot. I got recognition at work as well for getting freelance web and graphic design work.

6. What would you prefer HTML or CSS? And why?

Livio: Today I prefer CSS as it’s the latest trend in web designing and it’s the Web Standard. Got freedom from writing those long code TABLE, TR, TD....If it’s not PHP or ASP and we need to change something, my gosh can you imagine if we have 100 pages to be changed... today CSS has made it easy just change at one place and there you go. Wow it’s done!

CSS has the power to minimize file size and makes it easy to download in greater speeds, we would never have imagined. CSS creates layout instead of table and the texts in the sites are designed in the way we want it and still we find our code file size so tiny. Moreover, all the latest browsers e.g. Firefox, Opera, Netscape and Internet Explorer support CSS.

7. What are the most common areas of Web design that you think learners have trouble with?

Livio: Image sizes, functionality, using technology for technology sake, cross platform browsers, do not care for proper coding, user friendly etc.

8. What are a few of your favorite development tools and why?

Livio: As for the web I use tools like Photoshop for designing and HTML-KIT for coding. And for Print and Graphic I use Photoshop and Illustrator. I have changed coding tools like from HOMESITE to HTML-KIT. But I can never change my designing tool Photoshop; it’s an ultimate powerful tool to create powerful graphics.

9. You chose a very dark background for your blog. This calls for some extra care in choosing text, link, and heading colors. What thought went into your choices?

Livio: Well I had a very simple site with off-white and blue as side bar previously but then I do freelance as Graphic artist as well. So I wanted to portray both WEB+GRAPHIC and that’s how I came up with this concept. Moreover I am trying to write something though I am not good writer.. lol. Yah, choosing the color combination for text was difficult as to not to hurt people’s eyes while reading.

The first version of my site was in grayscale and then with white background with color on top then off-white and blue bar and the latest outcome is what you see.

It is my personal playground so I keep changing and experimenting its web and graphic design and usability as well.

Previously, I was using my own custom coding but now I have changed to Wordpress.

10. What is your philosophy about web and graphics designing and in general digital art as an artist?

Livio: I am not an artist in black and white but maybe I am born with it to be more into it. Designing with concept to deliver a message is better than to have a meaningless attractive design.

While designing for web, target audience has to be kept in mind. Often, I suggest the clients to design website not for them or their company but for the people who are going to visit it. Every site has different purpose and accordingly design has to be prosecuted. For example, designing web graphic for a night club should be with attractive color and effective design while for an institute it should be simple with more information.

Before signing off, I’d like to thank Livio for sparing out time for this wonderful interview and would like to wish him luck for all his future endeavors.82358