mcville: Tom Vining Interview

mcville is a community website where you can find smashing interviews
and articles with some recognized people, as well as discussions on
other topics like design,web development, lifestyle, music.

Tom Vining Interview

Jan 4, 01:34 PM by Marko

Interivew with Tom Vining at tokyocube.com

Marko: Heya Tom!

Tom: Hey Marko, how the devil are ya?
Marko: Great :)

Marko: For our reader’s could you tell something about yourself? (year old and other stuff)

Tom: Sure can. I’m 26 – I grew up in the lush green fields of Somerset, England – not literally, we had a house and stuff. After a couple years travelling the world, and generally putting off real life, I came to London where I now live with my beautiful girlfriend, Naoko.

Marko: How are you doing these days?

Tom: Very cool thanks, if not alittle too busy and in need of a damn good holiday – christmas and new year’s never enough!

Marko: When did you first encounter a keyboard or computer?

Tom: Must have been when I was about 12, and my mate had a sweet little spectrum 48k which we used to pray would load our games… and boy was it worth it, I mean those graphics!! :)

Marko: What is your favorite art work /website!?

Tom: That’s a tricky one. I like different pieces of work for different reasons, but in terms of fairly recent work I’ve seen, it’d be difficult to beat the perfection and simplicity of the tokyoplastic website. I also love the bbdo.com website – flashy as hell, but it also works too!

Marko: when you launched tokyocube.com are you happy with the result of the site?

Tom: To be honest, yeh I was pretty chuffed with the finished site. It was the first chance I had to build a site without the usual constraints of corporate design, and I kind of just went with exactly what me and my girlfriend were looking for. There are still a load of things I’d like to do to it, but that’s always the case.

Marko: What do you do in your spare time (We realize that spare time, in this context)

Tom: Since I live in London and the Thames is not renowned for it’s point breaks I usually replace a desire to go surfing with chilling out and generally enjoying life in the capital with my girlfriend. Prior to winter setting in, I was getting really into mountain biking.

Marko: Do you have a favorite drink? How much of it do you drink?

Tom: When I’m not working, its a nice pint of guinness. Its not exactly a daily beverage, but when I do drink it I can have more than my fair share.

Marko: Would you care to give us a brief overview of what a typical day is like for Tom?

Tom: Well, at the moment it consists of rolling out of bed at around 8:15, grabbing a shower and some toast (not at the same time – that’d just be plain wierd), then walking 5 minutes down the road to the Virgin office, where I work at the moment. The working day revolves around getting as much decent quality work done as possible, and is ended with a leisurely stroll back to the flat where I chill out and enjoy the evening with my girlfriend.

Marko: I am always wondering how people such as yourself go about getting work? How do you do it?

Tom: I think I’ve been immensely lucky recently – things just seem to have come in at the right time – infact too much at one time. Tokyocube seemed to really do the trick though in terms of getting more exposure as far more people than I expected seemed to really like it.

Marko: Who are some of your biggest influences?

Tom: I’ve got to say my girlfriend, Naoko, is a real influence in my life and definitely keeps me in check most of the time. In terms of design and the work that I do, I get influenced by all sorts of snippets of life around me, from flyer designs and ads on the tube (the good ones), to tv commercials and top notch websites – vague hah! :)

Marko: Is your background in design? What was the progression into web development and design like?

Tom: I always loved design when I was at school and used to spend hours drawing stuff. I got alittle side tracked after college where I did photography, media & english, and went off to do marketing in London as I wanted money at the time. Turned out, although I was earning the cash, it wasn’t what I really wanted so I headed off travelling and came back to study multimedia at uni. My degree was certainly the kick start for web related stuff.

Marko: If you where not a designer/programmer what would you be?

Tom: I’d probably still be travelling, with the occassional return to the UK to top up the bank balance. I suppose as alternative career moves I might have gone into photography or publishing.

Marko: How do you like our site mcville.net?

Tom: Seems pretty clean and simple, and the interview idea is cool. I like the victoriana style background!

Marko: If you could change something on mcville what would it be?

Tom: Have some kind of introduction, or did I miss that? I wasn’t really sure what it was all about at first.

Marko: yeah some users where confused – I managed to fix that ;)

Marko: What kind of music do you fancy?

Tom: Blimey, all sorts really. I used to be religiously into stuff like LTJ Bukem, London Elektricity and Big Bud, although more recently I’ve been listening to stuff like Bloc Party, Gorillaz, White Stripes, The Futureheads, urrr and loads of other stuff… too long to list.

Marko: What’s your favorite food?

Tom: Salmon Sashimi – infact, pretty much anything Japanese. Italian food is also a favourite.

Marko: Where do you get out on Saturday’s?

Tom: Up until recently it would have been mountain biking in the forests outside London, however now I live in the centre of London I mainly go out to restaurants, parks and stuff in the area.

some relaxing question to follow

Marko: Chinese or Thai (food)?

Tom: Thai, although I really like Dim Sum.

Marko: Coke or Pepsi?

Tom: Don’t really drink either, but if I had to it’d be coke.

Marko: html or css?

Tom: Kind of need both, but css is cool to work with.

Marko: Do you watch television? If so, do you have a favorite show?

Tom: Nope, no TV. When I did have Sky TV though, I spent most of my time watching the extreme sports channel wishing I was somewhere like Tahiti, not England.

Marko: What would we find in your favorites bookmarks-bar?

Tom: A whole host of cool sites that I come across – infact pretty much everything I remotely like these days gets bookmarked. Oh, and a whole load of hardcore p… nah, not really :)

Marko: What inspires you? This doesn’t have to be design related.

Tom: All the people in my life that I respect immensely, such as my parents, my brothers, and most certainly my girlfriend. I was also inspired immensely when travelling by all the people I met around the world who have far less than I do, and lead incredibly cool and happy lives.

Marko: Thank again for having this interview Tom ,Cheers!

Tom: My pleasure, take care dude!

Glen Chiacchieri Interview Happy Birthday Marko :) !

Events:

Promotion:

Links

powered by

Monitored by

Support

Tom Vining Interview

Jan 4, 01:34 PM by Marko