Antonio Fullone is Italian web designer, blogger, SEO and other more. He is the man behind popular blog about design LasTwebdesigner.com. Antonio is currently living and working in beautiful city of Barcelona as web designer, SEO and project manager for company located in Barcelona.
Ladies and Gents I’m presenting you man with many talents, incredibly funny Italian guy and my friend also – ANTONIO FULLONE!
I hope you will all enjoy this interview.
First of all welcome to webexpedition18.com and Thank You for doing this interview Antonio. Could you please tell our readers about yourself? Where are You from? How did you get started? Did you study something in particular or are you self-taught?
Thanks to you for the interview, I’m honored to have an interview with you!
I’m from Italy, exactly Calabria, a beautiful place in the south of Italy.
Well .. I started some years ago, when the tables were a must for a layout and CSS was something unknown, simply for passion, I had my first Modem 56 KpS and start to surf in internet, and becoming curious to know how this web site were made, then .. I made my first steps in html, after some year I started my freelance career and now I’m here struggling every days with css, layout photoshop and their “friends”.
I never studied about web site, I have no degree, I’m a full self-taught, in Calabria there’s not possibility to study or make a course about web sites design , everything I know I learned standing all the days, and the night too, on Internet, but I have to say that the “boom” of the blogs help me a lots to find new solution and learn much more about my Job.
So you are webdesigner, blogger, SEO … What is your favourite occupation?
Well .. I’m a web designer, now I’m working as project manager so I have to coordinate a little group of coworkers, manage some sites and improve this for the search engines, but the part of my work that i prefer is create the layout , with Photoshop and transform this in xhtml and css code.
Which skills do you consider a essentials for a web designer?
I think that every web designer must know a image editor software, like Photoshop, Fireworks or Gimp, have the knowledgement of SEO, usabilty and accessibility, and , of course, (x)html and CSS, if you learn something about scripting programming languages like PHP and Javascript is a plus, well …
Yes … a web designer today must be complete and, have,at least, a basic knowledgement of everything and know every steps to make a good design .. ok guys don’t look me so bad!! It’s and hard work but someone must to do it!
You have nice blog lastwebdesigner.com with unusual name and a lot of nice and useful articles. Is it hard to run a good blog? Dou You have enough time for blogging?
Well.. in this summer I had no times to write new post, this because I worked a lots and my holiday … well .. I would like to know what the heck is a holiday!!
I hope to take on loong month at the end of september and back in Italy to stay with my family, but i will back to write post soon.
The name?
Ha ha a lots of people ask me why this name, I know it seems strange … do you know that in internet there’s always a sort of competition about the web designers, the programmers , this happened in every place where i worked, so .. I prefer to consider me the last, there’s always something to learn about our Job, and I “follow” a good quote : “the last will be the first!”. Anyway was a good name that was in my mind and … is good for SEO too! cause there’s an important words in the URL, webdesigner!
It’s not hard to run a blog, but it’s hard to find time for write good post, I think that if you run a blog, you have to share good things for the “community”, so .. I don’t like to write simple post, I prefer to wait and have time to write a very good post, useful for all my readers. When write in a blog is your first occupation, you can find time for this(logically) , but when is simply a passion .. then … is hard to find time out of your Jobs.
What does your typical day look like?
Well .. I consider me lucky, I live in a beautiful city, Barcelona. I start to work at 9:30, come in the office and starting checking all the web sites if they are all right, after usually I have a short brief with the guys that write in our blogs, to talk about the new posts to write , check the analytics and adwords campaigns, another briefing with system administrator and the programmers and finally, I can start to work on the main web site that we have, getting in to photoshop and coding. One day for week i dedicate myself only to SEO for the websites.
What are your favorite websites?
Smashing Magazine, WebdesignerWall and the Carsonified blog over all! If we talk about the design, well .. there’s a lots of web site that I like, is a long list, like my RSS and bookmark list, of course your web site is already in my list before have this interview, as you know.
What social media tools you are using and what is your favourite one?
I use all the social media, facebook, twitter, friendfeed, identi.ca,linkedin, and others… my favourite? Well I think twitter is the best , and linkedin, although this last is a different “social” , I don’t like too much facebook but I use and I have more than 600 friends.
I think that the social network are really important today, is a must. For your branding put yourself in the social networks, but you must be carefully too! what you write and how you use this !! I think is important too, when you start a new project, for have a good Trust rank so , yes I consider these important for SEO and marketing campaigns too, but you have to use this in the right way, for example I don’t like people that invite me every days in groups, page fans or share links on my wall, this is one reason cause facebook is not my favorite social.
What advice would you give to someone starting out in the design industry?
Well .. when I started I was eager, enthusiastic , with a lots of illusion to … conquer the world, but .. is not the reality! especially if you start as a freelancer.
I suggest to be always update on new trends , the web design is always changing and improving, use internet and follow other sites to improve yourself.
With the clients? Well … be patience but give the right worth to your works, don’t sell yourself, create you portofolio, make your name and branding not only in internet to find new clients, if you have a blog try to give something free to the community to let you know, and, the most important thing, do a good work and leaves the client satisfied, this is the most important part of a web designer, you have no excuse on this.
What other interests have you got outside of the web world?
Music, I love hip hop music, italian spanish, american, go out for Barcelona with my friends and ..beers! Yes I love beer ( don’t think bad about this! i’m not a drunkard).
Since you are living and working now in Barcelona: FC Inter or FC Barcelona?
Oh MY god! this is the hardest question of this interview, these are my 2 favorites football teams! no comment on this!
Grazie per interview Antonio! And at the end, what are you doing when you’re not working? How do you spend your free time?
Going out with my friends, drinking some beers and enjoy this beautiful city. I love to walk in the nights in Barcelona, the beautiful streets and the beach! The really problem is .. find the time for this!!!
Thanks to you for this interview, I like your blog and a big hug to you and your readers!
So this is my friend, web designer, blogger, SEO, a man with many talents – Antonio Fullone. You can find and follow Antonio on twitter of course!
