1. Hi , who are you and what do you do?
I’m Jasper Tandy and I’m a freelance web developer/director of newly-founded echohelloworld. echohelloworld currently acts as a contracted web consultant and developer, which is just my way of giving advice on what would work for people based on what they want, then doing it for them.

I work mainly with PHP, Python, MySQL, Javascript, mootools and all the XHTML/CSS stuff as well – anything after designs have been done is me!

2. Describe a typical day at work?
I get up around 8am and feed the animals (a cat and a rabbit) and say bye to my wife. Then I’ll grab some breakfast and read through my RSS feeds/forums/twitter/flickr and have a look at my schedule to see what I’ll be doing for the day. My day can get pretty long with meetings and schmoozing with potential clients and partners, but it’s all fun. Hopefully the mad rush will die down soon and I can spend all day coding like before.

3. What do you enjoy most about your work?
Mostly the fact that a lot of clients (whether it be direct or through a design agency) have fairly low expectations of what can be achieved on the web. I like taking their ideas and blowing them up so they’ve got something they can be really proud of, and they’ll actually use. It’s great to get positive feedback from clients/designers and it’s even better for me to see what I’ve made actually being used!

4. What do you like least about your job?
It’s such a cliché, but I do a lot of HTML template creation and inconsistencies between browsers really frustrates me. Being a programmer, I don’t like inexplicable reasons for things going wrong and I always dread the first time I open a site in /those browsers/!

5. What is your worst enemy of creativity?
Red tape. I’ve worked for a lot of companies who have antequated limitations on what you can and can’t do with the web, for whatever reason. I find it really difficult when there’s a great way of doing something, but instead you have to design some convoluted, fragile system for something just to avoid rocking the boat. It’s one of the reasons I finally decided to go freelance; people seem to listen to your ideas more and become more flexible when you’re confident enough to be out there on your own.

6. What do you do when you start a new project and you have NO ideas?
So many things. I’m a great lover of pen and paper – I always have a fistful of bics and a notebook on me, just in case I get stuck. It might sound odd, but I tend to draw out briefs I’m given. I’ll leaf through and highlight entities then draw a map of where they belong together. Applications with good data design have a habit of writing themselves after a while, so once the ball is rolling and I get going, ideas go with me!

I also like to get out with my camera. Getting away from my laptop with some headphones on, trying to make shapes in buildings and people really helps me to get rid of the distractions in my life and concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing.

7. What inspires you the most?
It depends what I’m doing. Most of my inspiration comes from being totally focused and, for me, music does just that. It blocks out all distractions so I can totally immerse myself in whatever I’m doing.

When I’m working, a brilliantly designed template really gets me excited about a project and inspires me to kick ass—that’s definitely worth a mention as I hate working on horrible-looking sites!

8. Do you listen to music while working? And if “yes” what music do you listen to?
Yeah. It really varies. Since I started working with the web, my taste in music has totally changed. I listen to a lot of post rock because the absence of lyrics is great for when you have to concentrate. The rest of the time, I love violent, heavy music – any ending with “core”, basically!

9. How do you deal with criticism?
Overall, not great. I pour my heart into everything I do, and work very closely to specifications so when there’s any substantial amount of criticism, I take it quite personally. Luckily I work in a way that most changes aren’t a huge deal so, once I’m over being sensitive, changes derived from criticism can be easily made.

10. What does your workspace look like?

At the moment, it’s a real mess. The whole freelance thing came on really quickly and I’ve not had chance to clear out our spare room and make it my office. As such, I’m working on our dining table right now (which is cool—we don’t use it for eating anyway!) but I do want a desk! I have to keep all the cables on it or my rabbit will eat them. I tidied to take a photo, though!

11. Do you remember the very first web-project in which you were involved?
Professionally, yeah, it was a vegetarian hub site when I was a junior at the first company I worked at. I had to become au fait with this confusing CMS and do all the HTML and CSS. I remember not being very proud of it at the time because I was still learning the basics as I went along, but it turned out pretty well so I can’t complain!

12. Is there any advice you would give our readers?
There’s no such thing as “can’t”—”want” is enough. I wanted so badly to get out of generic office work and develop a career I could be proud of, and that’s really all it took to get started. After that, you’ve just got to work your ass off and you will be rewarded—your pride and hunger to succeed is always apparent in your work, so as long as you want to do it you’ll do well!

13. What has been the most fun project to work on so far?
I’m really enjoying the project I’m working on currently. I’m using a framework I’ve not used before and it’s brilliant. The people who wrote it seemed to know exactly what I wanted from a framework, so it’s been a pleasure to work on.

My favourite past project is my last company’s website. They are primarily a design agency so they had all these grand ideas about effects and layout, which were really fun to implement. It was my first outing with mootools as well—I love the baptism of fire approach!

14. Imagine yourself in 15 years… what do you see yourself doing?
I’d love to have my own small agency and basically be doing what I am now, but with people to get me clients and do the designing. I love small company culture, where everyone matters and their skills are used to their fullest and I want that for myself.

15. Please tell us 3 people who we should do this Interview with (Why them?).
Ash Hendry: an excellent designer and developer. He seems perpetually inspired, which I’m really jealous of!
Matt Saville: another who’s always got a brilliant idea on the go. We share a love of fonts, but his knowledge on the subject totally dwarves mine.
David Cooper: design, development, photography and all-round top guy. Also has an insatiable love of Japanese cars, which I can totally relate to!

Jasper…thank you very much for answering our questions :-)
So if you want to visit Jasper you should do that now: Visit echohelloworld or leave him a comment here! :)