Welcome To Headup – The semantic web – Blog

Our guest for this week’s interview is Ms. Audee Mirza.
Audee is a self employed graphic designer based in Surabaya, Indonesia. She’s also a loving mother, doting wife, and the founder of “Graphic Identity” – one of Indonesia’s most popular web design blogs.

I learned of Audee’s blog when one of my Google alerts notified me of a review of our widget she’d posted.

After reading the first sentence in her review I knew I had to invite her to star in one of our Weekly Blogger Interviews.

“Why?” you ask yourselves.

Because Audee learned of us by reading the interview I conducted with her online pal Ruhani Rabin (@ruhanirabin) couple of weeks ago, and I love these little reminders one gets ever so often that, although the web is a huge and intricate skein of links and connections, at the end of the day there’s always another human being at the end of the line – a person to connect to, learn from, laugh with…

Mike:
Hiya Audee!
How’s it going?

Audee:
Great! Cool chatting with you.

Mike:
The pleasure is all mine.
I’m often curious as to how people first learned about Headup, but I guess in your case there isn’t much point in asking…

Audee:
Not really – As you know I first heard about you from the interview you did with Ruhani Rabin.

Ruhani’s pretty big in the South East Asian web scene and since we’re friends I try and keep up with his posts and tweets. When he tweeted he’d been interviewed by you, naturally I had to follow the link, and that’s how I first heard about Headup. After I read the interview I decided to give your widget a spin and the rest is history.

Mike:
Indeed.
It still doesn’t give me the deeper background story though.
I guess what I’m really after is how you first became involved with the web professionally?

Audee:
It’s all part of the evolution of my online persona.

Mike:
Now that sounds like a story worth hearing!

Audee:
I don’t know about that, but here goes: Like many, and perhaps even most web designers working today, I never actually learned web design formally. My basic education is a degree in architecture.

Mike:
Sounds familiar so far. I studied Industrial Design myself and got involved with the Web as the Internet evolved all around us.

Audee:
I guess sometimes you just have to follow your passions. Even during my studies I found myself strongly drawn to the Web and Graphic Design, so I began educating myself using online tutorials, books and help from friends – pretty much anything and everything I could get my hands on.

I can honestly say that as far as my graphic design skills go I’m entirely self taught.

Mike:
Do you regret studying Architecture?

Audee:
On the contrary, I think it gave me a wonderfully broad base in the basic theory of design. These basics are pretty much the same regardless which discipline you study.

Mike:
Very true…
So now we know how you got involved with the Web but how did you get into the whole blogging and social media scene?

Audee:
I started blogging in June 2007 and joined Twitter a year later. I saw blogging as a great way to hone my skills, showcase my work, meet people, and promote my business. My first inspiration was the excellent Bittbox blog.

When I first started out I was using Blogger simply because it felt like the easiest way to start a blog. It’s still the platform of choice for Graphic Identity, but I don’t know for how much longer, because since then I’ve become more involved in building sites on WordPress, which is far more robust and versatile.

Mike:
So when you started out how did you decide what to topics to cover on your blog?

Audee:
Like I said before I was initially looking for a chance to express my abilities and skills. I thought a design niche blog would be a good start. Today I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned and helping other by writing tutorials and posting freebies.

Mike:
Seems your online generosity is well received. You have quite a following!

Audee:
Twitter following is just a number. It means nothing.

What really matters are the relationships you forge. Thankfully I’ve been blessed with a few of those too.

I only wish I had more time to be sociable and have more dialog with my followers.

Mike:
I’m curious as to how you juggle your time. You’re a self employed designer, a mother, and a blogger. What’s you secret?

Audee:
There’s no secret. I’m very selective in whom I follow and I tweet and retweet only things I find to be of value, like Headup.

It actually makes a pretty good example of my flow:
As I mentioned before I learned about you guys by reading Ruhani’s interview.
Since I like exploring new web applications, especially those that include a social aspect, I decided to try you out and write a review.
Knowing that I was committed to giving useful feedback encouraged me to try and get as full an experience of your product as I could, and I’m glad I did because I believe that Headup, and by proxy, my review of it, are helpful for my community.

This interview is a pretty great indication my activities have had value for me too.

Mike:
I think you just gave a very concise and succinct example of the ROI on blogging and social media activities in terms of building one’s personal brand!

Which brings me to my next question – Do you have a particular experience you feel is the highlight of your blogging “career”?

Audee:

“Highlight of my blogging career”, hmm…

I guess my best experiences are related to the freebies I create and share, like a series of Photoshop brush sets I released a while back.

It’s very gratifying to see how people appreciate my contributions.

Regretfully it’s getting harder for me to find time to provide these as more and more of my time is occupied with client projects. Still, I really miss playing around with my pen tool and creating vector freebies.

Mike:
Where do you see yourself a year from now?

Audee:
I want to keep up my blogging activity and freelance work and I’m also going to be launching a few new blogs very soon. I guess it would be nice to get more involved in collaborative projects

Mike:
I wish you the best of luck and would like to thank you again for all the support you’ve given us. I’ll be sure to look out for your new projects on your Twitter feed!

Audee:
Thanks!
I’m looking forward to seeing how you guys evolve too.

Mike:

So are we…