WIF 2008 - webdesign international festival - France

Every fortnight, wif team, in collaboration with the Pole Excellence e-Design, invites you to discover an interview of an interactive designer. This week, Olivier Gourvat : designer from France.

wif : « Only one sentence to describe yourself… »
Olivier : I’m Olivier Gourvat, I’m 36 years old and I’m a print and digital graphic designer made in Europe.

wif : « You don’t just suddenly become a webdesigner. Tell me what led you to this world? »
Olivier : In 1993, I began to work on print. Then, in 1998, I just turned towards interactive design (the dark side of the Force) when I first get on the Internet. Just like many other graphic designers, I remember being at once fascinated by this new media and the wide creative possibilities it offered.

wif : « According to you, to what extend technologic advances (human/machine interface, touchscreen, touchpad) do influence e-Design innovations? I mean: what is design role in these advances? »
Olivier : I think that design plays such an important role in the good understanding of an interface. Our job is to translate functionalities on a graphic scale, to create identities dedicated to electronic media and to develop ergonomics both useful to the user and to the sponsor. Design is indispensable and it has to be elaborated in close relationship with developers. Touch media (ie: the iPhone) is still something really new. I personally believe that it will lead to new creative paths dealing with an approach of design much more “sensorial”.

wif : « Taking your experience into account, can try you to imagine and tell me what your job and works will look like in the 5 next years? »
Olivier : That is so hard to imagine one’s future in that job!… I do really hope that we’ll have at our disposal some production tools much more intuitive, cheaper software licenses and development languages more flexible…for one unique goal: more freedom in our creations. I think that agencies and studios will be more and more dematerialized; market will be much more competitive than it is now. On the creative side, I think that electronic communication tools (ie: websites) will undergo some strong turn-over and that we’ll have to work more and more on “fleeting” stuff.

wif : « According to you, what media or what innovation has had the greatest impact lately? »
Olivier : Even if that’s not completely new, I think that SRS flow really is an excellent tool. I’m using it every day to seek for information dealing with politics or music for example. That’s a direct mean to go and find the information I’m looking for; nothing can thus get in the way of my researches. Besides, I’ve been on Charlotte Cheetham’s website (www.manystuff.org) and I really liked it. It’s that kind of place - still exceptional - where one can see out of step graphic creation.

wif : « On the opposite, what innovation has been the most useless, a complete “revolution disaster”? »
Olivier : Wap.

Retrouvez les créations d’Olivier sur son site : mostardesign.com

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