Aaron Elliott of forwardtrends

Aaron ElliottJuly 19th, 2007 - Continuing the trend of quality local designers participating in our Pittsburgh Designer Interview Circuit, Aaron Elliott of forwardtrends has happily volunteered himself to become #4. Aaron is another great Pittsburgh area designer that has a passion for great design and an obsession for Flash.

Just as the first 3 interviewees have done, Aaron does an excellent job explaining his life as a designer in the great city of Pittsburgh. Read though it, and take a sneak peak into the world of Aaron Elliott.

Thanks for taking the time to be interviewed Aaron. For starters, can you give us a brief background on yourself?

I got my education and degree in programming in the mid 90’s (lots of boring stuff like Unix, Cobol, FoxPro, etc.) and it sparked my interest for something new and web technologies were definitely it. I threw myself into learning everything I could, and eventually (around 1998) I got enough side-jobs and freelance gigs to quit my day job. Over the next few years I built up my reputation with solid experience, a very broad skill set and a tenacious drive to learn and succeed.

How and when did you decide to take the plunge and start your own company, forwardtrends.com?

After trying to get hired in every firm / ad agency in town, I quickly saw that I didn’t have the degree or big name experience to compete. I started forwardtrends to simply showcase my own work, let the world know there was an alternative out there, and try to get some new clients. Fast forward 10 years and I’ve freelanced or consulted for most of the large agencies in town, and I’ve gathered a large, respectable client base that continues to grow by word of mouth. Agencies in particular want someone they can go to with a design issue, a database problem, a flash request, or something else… and I’m happy to be all those guys.

I am sure that you would consider that a successful choice by now. So where do you see forwardtrends going in the next 5 years?

I have no idea – I’m in limbo at this point because I’ve pretty much capped myself out in terms of how much work I can do per year (by myself) so I either need to raise my rates, get the big office and hire people, or something else… I’ve been a one-man-show forever and it’s been successful for me so it’s hard to change but the demand is starting to make me consider new options. I’m also starting a couple new ventures as well so the overall business model will have to change at some point. Stay tuned.

Just by taking a look at your site, everyone knows that you are simply awesome at designing with Flash. What advise would you give to those designers out there that would start learning the specialty?

Start experimenting with it. Even if you’re a seasoned programmer, Flash can be confusing because you have a timeline, levels, and object oriented stuff to worry about, multiple different solutions to the same problem, and the option of using the timeline or straight code for animation. I look at Flash as my hobby, and I’m basically addicted to learning and knowing as much as I can about it – the best advice I can give is to dive in and get your feet wet – you’ll be hooked too. (Also check out http://www.kirupa.com – it has been a huge help over the years)

You site is like nothing else I have seen out there - it is fresh, clean and very well laid out. Where do you usually pull your inspiration from for all of your sites?

Thanks. I pull inspiration from everywhere – For example I can remember playing Madden 06 and loving the way the menu system worked so I replicated it in Flash for a client site. They loved it.

I also am a frequent visitor of:

Styleboost is great - my persoanl favorite has to be CSS Remix though. I notice that you have a few personal projects also. Care to elaborate on what they are and why they were started?

I have tons of personal projects going on – maybe Google™ will decide to buy one someday ;). One in particular that I’m proud of is http://www.fluidia.com – it’s basically a content management system that delivers its data via RSS / XML feeds so there’s nothing to install and works on every platform. Stop by and sign up for the Beta test!

Thanks for the opportunity to interview you Aaron. Best of luck to you and to forwardtrends in the future.

Thanks Chris and thanks for making such a great resource for Pittsburgh designers!

Here We Go Steelers.