{"id":103,"date":"2013-03-08T21:37:37","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T21:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/?p=103"},"modified":"2013-04-08T20:33:42","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T20:33:42","slug":"a-chat-with-david-smiley-mozilla-design-contributor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/2013\/03\/08\/a-chat-with-david-smiley-mozilla-design-contributor\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chat With David Smiley, Mozilla Design Contributor"},"content":{"rendered":"

I posted about the results of our WebDev badges design challenge<\/a> yesterday, and today wanted to share a bit more behind-the-scenes perspective via a quick Q&A with our winner, David Smiley<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Many thanks to David for sharing his talents with us…the work turned out great. Be sure to follow him on Twitter<\/a>, and read on for more details about what it’s like to be part of the Mozilla design community:<\/p>\n

What’s your design background? How did you become interested in design?<\/strong>
\nI’m a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida where I studied studied studio art. However, in terms of digital design I’m primarily self-taught. I’ve always enjoyed drawing but I think that it was Flash that really made me fall in love with design. I started creating Flash animations when I was about 14 years old and after that I just couldn’t get enough of it. A few years later, and countless hours spent toiling away in front of the computer screen, I find myself offering my services as a freelance graphic designer and still enjoy every minute of it.
\n<\/em>
\nHow did you find out about this design challenge?<\/strong>
\nI actually found out about the challenge through the Mozilla Creative Twitter account<\/a>. To be honest, I’ve been geeking out about Firefox OS lately so I’ve been following news from Mozilla pretty closely. <\/em><\/p>\n

What was your thought process behind the work here? Any particular inspirations or influences you’d like to share?<\/strong>
\nI’ve been following the Open Badges project<\/a> for a while now and have just been absolutely fascinated by it. As someone who is primarily self-taught when it comes to digital design I can definitely see the merit in a system that allows you to get recognition for skills you’ve learned outside of the traditional channels. For inspiration I looked to the existing Mozilla Webmaker badges. I felt like the contributor badges should continue the visual style that those badges started. I think the most challenging aspect of this project was the fact that I was pretty unfamiliar with contributing through Github, so it took some research before I was comfortable representing these achievements. I’m really satisfied with how they turned out though, and I hope the contributors enjoy them as much as I enjoy their work. <\/em><\/p>\n

Any advice for other designers looking to get involved with Mozilla?<\/strong>
\nFollow @mozcreative<\/a> on twitter and then head over to the design wiki<\/a> at the Mozilla Developer Network to get started! It really is immensely rewarding to contribute and be involved with such an awesome organization!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posted about the results of our WebDev badges design challenge yesterday, and today wanted to share a bit more behind-the-scenes perspective via a quick Q&A with our winner, David Smiley. Many thanks to David for sharing his talents with … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26520],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/creative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}