Eric Vasquez – 7 Design Questions Interview

Designer – Eric Vasquez
Website – ericvasquez.net

1. How much time do you dedicate to learning design every day?
I can honestly say that I spend anywhere between 2-8 hours a day working on something. Right now I am working as a Graphic Designer for Nickelodeon for my day job, and then when I get home I am usually working on Design Tutorials for Design Instruct or PSDFan. I’m also currently working on developing my first typeface which is a pretty huge undertaking.

2. What other designers do you have contact with on a regular basis?
I usually will just chat with my friends on other artists I know locally on a regular basis, but I am trying to expand my network by using sites such as Behance and Deviant Art to get my work out there. Sometimes I will send out emails to instructors or professors I have had in the past to touch base, but that’s about it.

3. Who are the top 2-3 designers that you respect and why?
Two of my favorite designers out there are Neil Duerden and Chuck Anderson. Neil has such a detailed illustrated style, I remember the first time I saw his work I truly felt inspired and wanted to push myself further to become a better designer because of him. I still check out his site from time to time just to see what he has been up to. With Chuck, I think that you can see some of his inspiration in my work. He may have been one of the first people to adapt to the colorful light effects and glows and everything but he does it in such a clean way that you want to see what he will do next. This is the same thing I strive for with all of my work.

4. What’s your favorite website or design you ever made and why?
It is pretty tough to just select one favorite design but right now I would have to say that one of my favorites is a piece I did called ‘Spaced Out’. The reason I have picked this one is because not only was it one of my first and most successful design tutorials, but it was also featured on several sites including Creattica which has never accepted any of my work except for that one particular design. It also sums up a style that I feel I have in some ways made my own over the last year or two as it has become somewhat of a trademark for me.

5. Have you ever been published in a book or magazine? What books or magazines?
I have never been published in a book before, but that would be absolutely amazing! I have been featured in two issues of Advanced Photoshop though, most recently in Issue #77 where I did an interview and had some of my work shown as well.

6. What’s your favorite color in hexadecimal? How often do you find yourself leaning towards it with design projects?
My favorite color in hexadecimal would have to be #00CC00 because it is the vibrant green color that I use on my Portfolio Site as well as on my Behance-Folio, business cards, and pretty much any related branding that is tied to my name.

7. What’s your most recent project we can look at?
Just this past weekend I actually put out two new projects, both of which have gotten some pretty strong reactions so far. The first is called Ancient Kingdom, and it is an Egyptian-themed design where I used maybe five or six different photos, custom brushes, and some custom vector shapes that I created in order to make the final composition.

The other new design I have just created is called Taken and it’s a very dark and dramatic photomanipulation that shows a man being pulled and transformed into a tree, giving the sense that he is struggling to pull himself away. This particular design took me about five days to create and uses a few stock images and some custom brushes all done in Photoshop.

Check out some of the wallpaper freebies Eric Vasquez made for you all!