Eduardo Valdivieso
www.introzo.com


Location: Irvine, California

Tell us a little about your background.
I was born in Peru. I am 29, I moved to California 2 years ago. I've always spent time drawing or painting. Then I discovered the web and all the cool shit you can do with it. I've been designing for 6 years now.

Design Education:
I have a bachelor degree on Graphic design. I was lucky to have a cool program at the Art Faculty (Universidad Catolica of Peru), during the first 2 years we had to take different courses like sculpture, drawing, painting and graphic design. So I learned a lot from friends that took different majors than mine. If I could rescue 2 things from college they would be the art history courses and the methodology.

How did you start out as an artist/designer?
I was always drawing characters and building stuff with paper or cartoon as a kid. But I think I really felt this was my thing when I went to my brother's university and I saw a bunch of guys painting a tree or something. So I went to check the classes. After College a new media company ("new media" at the time of course) hired me to design interfaces for a cultural multimedia cd. That was my first real project.

What inspires you?
Music, other designers, painting, video games, anime, graffiti, good weather, sports, women.

Describe your style of design:
I don't have a style of design (at least that s what I hope), I guess, strong colors inside a grid layout, supported with vector forms and animation. I m starting to clean up my comps. I like the urban culture and its overall feeling.

What are your thoughts on Macromedia Flash?
It s a great tool, but as any good creation, there are always evil hands that will develop evil things with it...we gotta stop them! haha what I mean is that everyone already knows how great it is, at the end what matters are the skills you have to make it even better.

What would you add to your workstation to increase productivity?
A wacom tablet, 2 flat monitors, a huge cd organizer, a better scanner and a masseur of course!.

What do you do besides design?
I like to travel a lot. I am also really into contact sports: boxing, kickboxing, submission fighting, jiu jitsu. Helps me relax and stay in shape. I just started snowboarding, so basically I suck at it right now. I spend weekends clubbing and going to concerts whenever someone good is playing.

In two years where do you see yourself in the Design Industry?
Having my own studio would be great. You never know. I still like the freedom of moving to London, for example, without too much planning. Wherever I move, I still have a list of projects I haven't
developed yet, so I am sure I ll be pretty busy.

If you had to choose one, what is more important for a designer: artistic qualities or design education?
Artistic qualities definitely. A piece of paper doesn't teach you good taste, passion and common sense.

In your opinion, have your past travels to Italy, Japan, Germany, Spain, and the US influenced the way you design today?
Of course. The fact that each one of this countries have different perspectives to layout things and set color palettes gave me a complete new approach every time I was gonna design something new. Also
meeting new people, music and costumes took me outside of the box again and again.

Where would you say was your most favorite place to visit?
I really enjoyed my time in Italy. Rome and Venice were cool but I guess the amount of tourists didn't let me disconnect myself from everything else. So Verona and Turin were better, way more calm and quiet, gave me exactly what I wanted at the time. I am planning to go to Prague, Czech Republic this year. I heard it s beautiful, my girlfriend wants to go to Paris though, she has lived there before. So I don't know, I'll let you know who won the fight...

What differentiates your style of design than that of today's New Media Designers?
I guess I try not to follow many rules and I really fight with myself to please the client needs instead of my ego. For my personal site, it was different, because it was the only time when I was 100% in charge, so it s a great feeling to feel free to fuck it up and fix it with my own direction.

Do you think that traditional art styles transfer well to graphic design? If so, why?
Sure, I permanently find myself going back to sketching and traditional illustration when I get stuck on the creative process. Doesn't matter if it is the sitemap, the usability or the interface. The principles are the same after all, composition, color and good balance. Everything trying to communicate one concept.

Do you have any new projects coming up that you can tell us about?
I just got a full time position at 2advanced, I respect their work so it is gonna be a cool mix. I am also doing snowboard and t-shirt illustrations for fatchen. And I think that I'll be able to finish my graphic novel project finally, I've been working on the concept since 2 years ago, but I haven't had time to produce it.

In your opinion, what defines a good portfolio?
Unique elements and a strong concept. It s cool when you can see the designer behind the work. I like when there is decent balance between the content and the interfaces. It s getting harder to find a different portfolio out there, there are so many influences and copycats.

How did you come up with the name of your site: NASTEE 74?
I was thinking of something dirty and morbid when I developed the interfaces, that s when I thought of Nastee. 74 is my year of birth, so not much creativity there. Also nastee.com was taken.

As designers (or people, in general), we all have habits that we can't seem to shake off. What are some of your bad design habits?
I don't have any patience, I wanna see how the final design is gonna look and feel, so I loose a lot of details in the process. I am working on fixing that though.

What program that you currently use would you like to see changed and why?
I've always thought that 3Dmax interface is not as friendly as it should be, I am just starting to play with it and I don't find it easy to use. Maybe I've spent too much time on Flash and Photoshop. I like after effects usability a lot.

I love the background music, the design style and Flash artistry presented within your site. How did you go about choosing the overall design scheme of NASTEE 74?
I spent a lot of time taking pictures and filming in LA, the streets textures, metro, people, downtown. All of that gave me a cool feeling that I mixed with some tracks that I always listen while I work. From the start I thought of big badass animated interfaces to hold the content.

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