Designer – Franz Jeitz
Website – fudgegraphics.com
Blog – fudgegraphics.com
Twitter – @fudgegraphics

Franz Jeitz at Fudgegraphics playing guitar

1. How much time do you dedicate to learning design every day?
I don’t have a set amount of time dedicated solely to learning. I do however learn something from every project I work on. Pushing yourself and trying new things is a great way of gaining new knowledge. If I stumble upon a good tutorial (which happens quite a lot) I always take the time to read through it to see how it’s done. I rarely ever do tutorials step by step anymore, I rather try to understand how it’s done so that I can use the techniques later on (giving it my own twist through trial and error).

 

2. What other designers do you have contact with on a regular basis?
I connect with many great designers and bloggers via twitter on a regular basis. Here’s some I’m particularly fond of: Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine, Graham Smith of ImJustCreative, Chris Spooner of Blog.SpoonGraphics, Rob and Angie Bowen of Fuel Your Creativity, Niki Brown of Design O’Blog, Jeff Gardner of The Shoreways and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

 

3. Who are the top 2-3 designers that you respect and why?
James White of Signalnoise. I love his style and he has inspired many of my designs. On top of that he’s an awesome guy. I love the fact that he’s so helpful within the design community.
Scott Hansen of ISO50. He’s the reason I got into design. I could look at his portfolio for hours. Plus he’s a musician.
Shepard Fairy of Obey. I’ve just bought his book and i love how he emerged from being a guerilla underground artist to essentially becoming the face behind the Obama Campaign. I especially love his handmade designs using stencils and everything.

 

4. What’s your favorite website or design you ever made and why?
I’m very fond of my calendar wallpaper series which is a self-initiated project of mine. Each month I create a new desktop wallpaper featuring the current calendar. It allows me to try out new techniques and it forces me to work on at least on personal project a month. See all the designs here

Franz Jeitz at Fudgegraphics

5. Have you ever been published in a book or magazine? What books or magazines?
I’ve never been published as an artist in any book or magazine, however some of my freebies (textures and Photoshop brushes) made it on the covermounts of Photoshop Creative (UK and NL), Digital Artist (UK) and Computer Arts (France, coming soon).

 

6. What’s your favorite color in hexadecimal? How often do you find yourself leaning towards it with design projects?
That is a tough one, but I think I have to go with a dark grey: fudgegraphics color#222222. It is just very versatile and I used it often for borders, lines and image backdrops. Furthermore it can be easily combined with any other colour.

 

7. What’s your most recent project we can look at?
That would be the custom myspace design I did for the UK based label “Communion”. I also did all the flyers and logo design for them. Visit the myspace here