December 1997: Wichar Jiempreecha

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December 1, 1997

The following article was originally published for the Site Builder Network Workshop (now MSDN Online Web Workshop.)

If you can be one of the first to pick up the new tools, you can be really successful.

As Senior Art Director at Rare Medium Inc. , Wichar Jiempreecha brings an international flair to the successful digital design studio located in New York's Silicon Alley. Wichar came to Rare Medium following three years at R/GA Digital Studio in New York, where he had been doing art direction and producing award-winning campaigns for clients such as Intel, Sprint, 3M, Phillips, New York Lotto, Newsweek, Spin, Dow Jones, IBM, Disney, DC Comics, and RCA Television.

He has a BFA in Printmaking from Silpakorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, and an MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Wichar was a 1992 runner-up in the Truevision Video Graphics competition, and garnered a first-place award for best artistic video in the 1993 Truevision series. His 1993 film entitled "Turn of the Tide" was also awarded a first-place prize for 3-D fine art, in addition to the competition's Grand Prize, in the first annual Computer Pictures Design Competition in 1994.

SBN: What would you say are the keys to good Web design?

Wichar Jiempreecha: I believe that great Web design is, as all good design is, a matter of context. Good design, i.e., a seamless blending of content and metaphor -- in which what is being conveyed and the manner in which it is conveyed, whether on the Web, CD, print, etc., are inextricable -- is always an inspiration.

SBN: How does cross-browser capability affect your Web design choices?

Wichar Jiempreecha: Cross-browser capability affects my design to the extent that form follows function. One of Rare Medium's fortes is to create avant garde sites that degrade gracefully. This is a crucial component to good Web design. My other cardinal rules include frugal file size without aesthetic compromises.

SBN: What creative tools do you use?

Wichar Jiempreecha: Photoshop is my tool of choice; I use it for everything, including drawing, painting, retouching, layout, special effects, animation.

SBN: What screen resolution do you prefer to work with?

Wichar Jiempreecha: While preferring to design for 800x600 resolution, Rare Medium's design credo, based on a solid user-interface foundation, requires optimization at 640x480 resolution. The sites we do are mainly consumer sites, so we basically prepare for the worst-case scenario, so that parts of the site don't end up off the screen, requiring scrolling left to right -- which is not fun when you surf the Web.

SBN: What do you enjoy most about your position?

Wichar Jiempreecha: The best thing about being a designer at Rare Medium? Establishing new paradigms in a new medium.

SBN: And what's the least enjoyable part?

Wichar Jiempreecha: The worst thing about Web design in general? Clients don't necessarily want to push the medium far enough; the bar isn't as high as it is in film or broadcasting.

SBN: What would you consider your latest, greatest Web achievement?

Wichar Jiempreecha: My latest, greatest foray into this area, a redesign of Procter & Gamble's http://www.totalbabycare.com/ , is designed with the needs and desires of mothers with young children foremost in mind.

SBN: Do you have any thoughts you might share on the social or cultural implications of Web design?

Wichar Jiempreecha: I hope that the type of user-centric, customized Web experiences we at Rare Medium are designing improve the way in which information is processed.

SBN: Where do you look for inspiration?

Wichar Jiempreecha: I spend free time surfing the Web, looking around to see what people are doing. But when I am designing a Web site, I just basically look at the subject matter, and relate that to something totally non-Web related, and try to come up with something. It helps that I have a lot of training and a fine-art background. I don't want to say that the ideas come out automatically, but I spend a lot of time studying the material the client gives me, and then try to come up with something different.

SBN: What impact will these new Web technologies have on fine art?

Wichar Jiempreecha: Right now, I don't really see sites that I would call fine-art sites. Mostly, people just put images up. I can't really think of any site that you go there and say, "This is a fine-art site." It's still pretty much commercial.

SBN: Do you think the work being done on the Web is going to feed back into other design forms?

Wichar Jiempreecha: Yes, I think so. At this time, there is a lot of exciting stuff on the Web. I'd still like to see more.

SBN: What is your opinion of the current state of Web design technology?

Wichar Jiempreecha: I basically look at the possibilities of what you can do, but right now it is still pretty limited in terms of the speed of the modems for the people at home. We worry a lot about that, because most of the work is for the customers, and they don't have lightening speed modems like we use. You can't expect people to use the latest technologies. You know, somebody's still using Netscape 2.0. If I didn't have to worry about all those people, I could just do whatever. With a high-speed modem -- one that you can use to view on the TV, and send data through the cable -- we would not have to worry about the size of the graphics and things like animations. Personally, I would like to try something that would be on the boundary of what technology provides these days. It would be really fun to work with those things, but these days it's not that realistic.

SBN: How do you approach a new design project?

Wichar Jiempreecha: To get Web pages up is pretty easy, but to make them great is not that easy. It takes, in addition to a good designer, a really good programmer. The programmers are doing CGI script, they're doing Java. It would be a lot easier for me to do the art, do the design for the page, and then talk to that person and see if it's possible to do what I have envisioned on the Web.

SBN: So, it's a collaborative process?

Wichar Jiempreecha: Basically, we work together on the same piece. I don't think it can be a one-man project.

SBN: How can people who are new to Web design position themselves to be successful in this field?

Wichar Jiempreecha: I believe they should try to keep up with the technologies. The new technologies will open up the door for them to be successful, because things are moving really fast. From a year ago to now, a lot has happened. If you can be one of the first to pick up the new tools, you can be really successful.

SBN: What do you think is the future of Web design and of the Internet itself?

Wichar Jiempreecha: I think it's a really powerful form of communicating. I don't see limited possibilities on the Web. I feel it's still wide open.

SBN: What do you think will be the biggest change in the way we use the Web 20 years from now?

Wichar Jiempreecha: I see the Web as a resource that you can use to look for anything. I think it will be even better. Now, people go home and watch TV. I think that 20 years from now, you'll go home and go on the Web -- and just like watching TV, you'll be able to see the news, see everything that's going on in the world. I am still hesitant to say that it will replace television, but it will probably be something like that.

Photo Credit: Michael Moore/Microsoft Corporate Photographer