An interview with Makepretend's Anna Arbuckle

MAKEPRETEND’s website

You have very recently decided to return to freelancing and are in the process of setting up your own company, MAKEPRETEND. What has made you decide to do it this point, particularly given the state of the market?

I think most of all I simply needed a change of pace. I love what I do but I realized that after over 10 years in web design I needed to be wary of not burning out. Being a designer really is my life. I do not want to wake up one day, having lost any excitement for the thing I do on a daily basis. Recession or not it was simply the time to move on and start working to change the formula a bit. One of the main aspects of MAKEPRETEND is the chance to broaden the spectrum of my work beyond interactive and the occasional identity projects.

Tell us more about Make Prentend, and what your ambitions are for the company.

Well, its a work in progress (what isn’t?). I have just left my job and I am trying to free my head a bit, get a mini mental break over the summer. It will take a while for MAKEPRETEND, to hit stride for what we are aiming for. This might seem cheesy - I really do believe that New York is a place where, as long as you stay alert, interested and engaged things can fall into place for you. It’s one of the reason to be here for me.

Right now we are doing a combination of self-initiated portfolio projects, some teaming up and some client work to mainly build a portfolio that we are proud of, we are not rushing things. Eventually we would like to move into high level creative direction, concept and content development - a “super boutiquey” consulting shop. This would allow us to remain a small, potentially just two person team and operate along the lines of say a director or photographer, we really have no interest in creating an “agency”.

Miyabi Tanaka Photography

You have worked for some very large organisations such as Huge, Agency.com and Area17. What did you enjoy and learn from working at such places, and what did you find frustrating about your experience there?

Agency.com was really my only (very shortly lived) full time brush with corporate cubicle world. All my other stints with large scale agencies were freelance. HUGE was only 8 people or so when I came on - so it really has not much to do with the shop they are now - and AREA17 was just starting out as well.

In general I learned that you will find talented people in all places, large or small, and these are the people you will often learn from. In regards to frustrations with larger agencies, I guess I mainly have a problem with the faux layers of promotional hierarchy that have to be created when an organization grows beyond a certain size. Smaller shops are often completely capable of doing the same scale work with a third of the people. I think as a general rule of thumb smaller teams make for a better project flow, enhance creativity and do create a better experience for both parties involved.

Kenjikeda

Having spent quite a lot of time in the US, how would you compare the web/interactive design industry between the two continents, in terms of approach and creativity? Is there a really a distinct difference?

I actually have never worked in Europe! I came to New York while still finishing off my MFA in Germany. I have some friends at home who are in our field, and of course we talk about our work and such. I can attest they work as hard as people here in New York, beyond that I have been told I would probably need some sort of “cultural integration” training if I were to say take Creative Director position in Germany. I think especially decision making is very much more of a communal process over there.

In regards to creativity as in “style” I think that certain regions all over the world just have very different ways to express themselves visually, as they of course also do in fashion etc. This form of creativity is subordinate to trends, and taste levels. I think the real creativity in our industry does not really happen in visual design anymore, but in form of engineering and user experience design driven by hardware and mobile technology. The designers/creators who are ahead of the curve in web or interactive design are the ones that can combine a personal and unique approach of programming with great visuals, like Yugo Nakamura or Jonathan Harris.

We Are Rocket Science

You did an MFA in New Media: how important do you think education is in carving a career in interactive/web design?

Well, I went to school really at an odd time. As I am from East Germany, and ended up going to school in the East, in my home town Leipzig, a lot of things were simultaneously in transition. I ended up, very randomly really with a spot at the New Media Fine Arts program at the School of Visual Arts (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst) Leipzig. The program is a fine arts program, I was never trained as a designer. I think after the first couple years of art school I realized I really don’t have the urge to express myself in ways an artist does, I am really more of a “problem solver”. Meanwhile I was supporting myself through school by working at small ad agencies and a local newspaper around town.

I think for my generation interactive designers there is really no straight answers on how most of us ended up where we did. A lot of the disciplines within the field were not even named yet, nor could you attend school for such. For me the internet was one of the more accessible new things popping up at the time, so I dabbled in my first web projects around 1996, 1997. Pursuing this path eventually allowed me to get an internship in New York City in 1999.

Looking back, no one in my career has ever asked to see my diploma, it has always been about the portfolio and lately more about the resume. It is something I have always liked about this field, especially in an age when a hand full of design “super schools” seem to be morphing into the holy grail of all things design in North America. At the same time school is important, more in the sense that it is a time that has very likely a very different pattern and pace to it then the rest of your life to come, it allows you to think and experiment in different ways. I don’t think it necessarily matters if you went to school for chemical engineering or architecture and eventually end up as a designer, but one should definitely aim to obtain some form of University or College degree.

— Posted on September 2nd, 2009 by Daniel in: Interview

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