Interview with Vitaly Friedman from Smashing Magazine

Vitaly Friedman: Dear Stacy, thanks for having me! I do have something significant planned, and you now every time I’m traveling (and I travel a lot!), there is this wonderful feeling of belonging and feeling of going back home. For many years, I didn’t have it, and to some degree, it felt like floating from one part of the world to another. I’m very happy to have this feeling for the last couple of years.

Vitaly Friedman: Absolutely! There is nothing that relaxes me more than a good workout in the gym. Unfortunately, with traveling it’s difficult to set up a proper schedule or routine, but I try my best always to find some time to get back into shape — I usually feel way more energized and creative afterward!

Vitaly Friedman: Oh I wish I’d found that magic formula! Most of the time, it’s just about setting priorities straight. I don’t use any fancy applications or tools — I just write down all to-dos in a plain text file, and every evening before I go to sleep, I prioritize and pick seven most important ones for the next day, and I just tick them off. There is never time unless you choose to dedicate time to something that matters to you. I set time apart for things that matter, and everything else follows naturally.

Vitaly Friedman: Yes, absolutely! There is something almost magical about being on stage and feeling all the energy coming from the audience. If I weren't an editor, I’d probably be a teacher, as I love sharing and evolving ideas, thoughts, learning from different perspectives and refining yours. 

I’ve been speaking quite a lot, and I do it mostly because of my drive — I need to share, to learn, to explore, to doubt, to double check, to question. I’m very curious, and that’s also why we organize conferences. The initial thought to set up a conference was all about bringing people together, so we can all learn from each other. It hasn’t changed a bit yet.

Obviously financials matter as well, but I treat them as enablers — I would never cut down corners or budgets for saving money (I’m not that good at it at all anyway!) The thing that we create and how we create it, with dedication, with passion, with obsession on quality, is way, way more important for me.

Vitaly Friedman: I think that many of us tend to stick to “safe” solutions. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we keep reusing common patterns and frameworks and strategies. But I think that if you want to stand out, you need to have a strong vision — a vision that some people will genuinely dislike or find tasteless.

There are too much “neutral” experiences around us today — we do want to delight users, but I feel like we delight them in the same way. In our consultancy work, we always try to make one step more — add a bit of joy in every single step of interaction, with interface copy and visual design. But it’s also important to experiment. Break out of the existing patterns and try something different. It doesn’t mean ignoring what exists, though: take what exists but use it as a boilerplate to build upon, to break it and move to various design directions, to get out of the existing patterns.

Vitaly Friedman: Oh, it’s really difficult to say. To be honest, when I’m asked this question, I always feel like my current project is the most interesting one I had so far — just because we haven’t figured out it entirely yet! Right now, I’m working on our lovely new Smashing Membership, and I won’t reveal too many details just yet, but this has been a massive challenge regarding UX. We've decided to take a closer look at everything — what Smashing Magazine stands for, and how we are seen, and how we want to be seen. 

It was a personal journey for me since I co-founded the magazine back in the day, and it was a big challenge as for rediscovering the checkout UX, the product pages, the reading of our articles and so many other things. We’ve been very, very busy.

Vitaly Friedman: Well, there is room for everything. Sometimes you design one-offs which can’t be broken down into parts to set up a design system, and sometimes every page follows a template. I think that the most important part is that we, as designers and developers, should enable everybody to publish for free, without permission, immediately, quickly. Personally, I tend to start from scratch with a pencil and a notebook. I usually work on a concept and design the experience. I tend to avoid everything: no frameworks, no actual prototypes, no templates. Eventually, it changes in the project, but at this point, the idea is already being implemented.