Joris Rigerl

I am a designer from Graz, Austria, currently freelancing within the les Avignons collective.

I focus on interactive and web design for high­-end and fashion clients preferably. When the need arises I also handle front­end development duties and motion design. Over the last few years the work I’ve done for a variety of clients all over the world has been featured on sites like Awwwards, Design Made in Germany and FWA.

10 questions for Joris Rigerl:

• What did you do before becoming a designer?

  I guess I played a lot of video games. When I started getting into design, I was still in high school. At first, playing around in Corel Draw (those were the times) was a great excuse to spend some more time at the computer, but then at some point everything kind of snowballed and I started taking on my first clients when I was 15.

• Where do you turn for inspiration?

  I’d love to say that I’m inspired by all sorts of things in my daily life but to be honest, I just hang around the web a lot and look at tons of stuff. I’m a frantic user of Feedly, where I collect RSS feeds from around 100 to 200 sources and I try to curate everything from fashion to interaction design on Pinterest, which is usually where I turn first when I start out a new project and try to decide on the general look and feel.

• Which are your favorite studios, designers or agencies?

  I really admire studios that manage to maintain a certain level of excellence across all of their projects, no matter the client or industry. There are probably too many to mention them all, but a couple of good examples are Anti, Deutsche & Japaner, Two Times Elliot, Hello Monday, GrandArmy, Random and lots more.

  The same also goes for designers, some I really look up to are Frank Chimero, Till Wiedeck, Eli Rousso, Bobby McKenna, Matt Chase and about a million more. I’ve just recently started bookmarking all of my favorite people and agencies, so maybe I should put my list up online some time.

• Is your city a good place for designers?

  I like to think so. Graz is Austria’s second city with only about 300k inhabitants, but we have a very lively design scene, probably one of the reasons that we are a UNESCO City of Design. Especially the area around our two les Avignons offices is thriving with design studios, art practices and co­working spaces. Of course not all is well and we still struggle with things like some local clients undervaluing design, but living in such a small city also has advantages like the fact that it’s pretty easy to get to know the local scene as there’s only a handful of good agencies and studios and they’re all very approachable.

• Which technologies are you excited about in 2015?

  I’m curious to see the impact that the launch of the Apple Watch will have on the design scene. Although I’m not super excited about the hardware (I still prefer wearing my analogue wristwatch over a clunky smart watch), I can’t wait to see what kind of ingenious apps and use cases people will come up with. The real success factor of the iPhone wasn’t the hardware, but the App Store and the developer community behind it and I think we’ll see something similar happen with the Apple Watch and wearables in general.

• Do you listen to music while you work? Describe your playlist.

  There’s hardly a time where I don’t listen to music. I mostly listen to Electronic (Future House, UK Garage, Techno, Trap) and Hip Hop music. I’m a huge fan of designers.mx to discover new stuff to listen to. If only I’d get around to publish more mixes myself, there’s about 4 or 5 cued up just waiting for me to make a cover…

• What are you cultural influences? (Music, books, films, ideologies, etc.)

  I’ve been really lucky to have grown up surrounded by art. My parents have always taken me to museums and gallery when I was younger and there always used to be paper and pencils lying around the apartment. Although I do my best to keep up, I really wish I’d get around to see more art in person nowadays. As for films, I’m a huge fan of Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese and Edgar Wright. Also Star Wars. Star Wars is pretty great.

• Have you got an academic background or are you self taught?

  Although I’m currently finishing up my bachelor’s degree in Information Design at FH Joanneum in Graz, I still consider myself mostly self taught. It’s mainly got to do with how I started out in high school and learning by doing. I’ve always been the kind of person to say yes first and find out how to do it on my own later on.

• What do you do in your free time?

  I try to spend as much time as possible aside from work und uni with my friends and my girlfriend. When I get around to it, I also perform live visuals at various clubs and festivals and dabble around with DJing.

• Where do you see the industry in 5 years?

  This is a tough one. I mostly see currents trends continuing. Big startups and product firms are going to grow their in-house departments, swallowing up as much talent and service design studios as they can. The ones that are left will have to become more specialized and at the same time more adaptable to changes in the industry.

  More importantly though, I think we’re finally going to stop thinking about design as a visual feat. As technology will continue to permeate our everyday lives, making design invisible will become essential. In 5 (or maybe 15) years we will no longer talk about flat or material design, but instead about design being “smart”, “instinctive” or “predictive”.

• Are you working on any personal projects?

  I’m always working on a bunch of side projects at the same time, but unfortunately with my freelance work and university, there’s too little time to finish and release much of it. Let’s hope this’ll improve in 2015.

• If you could give one piece of advice to newbie designers, what would it be?

  Work hard and never stop learning.