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A big thanks to David Hyde of DavidTheDesigner for fighting his cold to answer some questions for a big fan!

Lydia Slavutin: Why did you decide to start davidthedesigner.com?

David Hyde: I think that basically I'd become very frustrated with web sites - that is my own company's web sites. I'd been a very early adopter of the internet and we'd had a web site presence since 1998 (although it still seems remarkable to me that that was only nine years ago). Through the years we'd tried many different approaches to how the site was presented - bearing in mind that we are a design agency, so the approach was always going to revolve around the presentation of a portfolio of projects. But I could never find a way to fully engage with an audience and get them to respond and enter into a dialogue. And then around 2005-06 I became aware of blogs and got drawn into a few which were compiled by designers, or people working in the media in some way. Two very early ones that I followed were the now defunct Joshuaink  and the still going, but no longer in the same way, Hicks Design Journal. It was these two (John Oxton especially) who first inspired me and convinced me that this was something that I could do.

LS: How did it come to fruition?

DH: Well, first of all I started commenting on blogs - two in particular: AceJet170  and Noisy Decent Graphics. And thus I became hooked. And the process of moving on to creating my own blog happened very quickly. The only real difficulty was finding a blog name - and that also happened very quickly and quite serendipitously. I'd been trying to create account somewhere online - Yahoo, I think - and I had to create a user name. And you know how you always start off with your own name? And then you discover that one of your namesakes has got there before you? And so you have to go through a whole permutation of bastardisations of your own name. Well, I spent a good 10 minutes going through that process and eventually ended up with 'davidthedesigner'. Eureka! I thought: that would make a good blog name. And so in November 2006 DavidTheDesigner was born. And after six months I realised that this was something that was going to stick, so I purchased the domain name davidthedesigner.com and my TypePad account was remapped.

LS: What are your thoughts on the growing popularity of the design blogging community?

DH: I didn't immediately appreciate this, but the most important part of that question is the word 'community'. Because that's what you do when you blog: you become part of a community. And it's a very friendly and welcoming community - or at least the design blogging community is. You should join it, if you haven't done so already.

LS: Do you think that blogging about design has changed design? If so, how?

DH: No, I don't think it has changed design. Good design is good design - always has been and always will be. What blogging has changed, though, is the way that you can go about designing. So if you need some additional help on a project, say, then you're no longer constrained by who happens to be in your address book - the whole design world is there on your doorstep.

LS: What are your resources for creative inspiration and endeavors?

DH: What's inside my head.

LS: What is your favorite part of your blog?

DH: This made me smile.

This is one of my best interviews to date! Thanks again to David Hyde of DavidTheDesigner for his witticism and contributions to the design community!