Lealea Design is a service company run by Lea Alcantara, and is based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Tweeting at @lealea and broadcasting for the masses at the newly relaunched EE Podcast, Alcantara is a web designer/developer with "sass and class" who knows ExpressionEngine inside and out.
This week, we chat with Alcantara and find out the As to our Qs.
MQ: What do you love/hate about ExpressionEngine?
LA: I think the templating system is its killer feature. It allows front-end designers to get their code exactly how they want -- and then it's outputted exactly as we want. I love its custom fields! EE's community is also without compare. In terms of hate, well, that's a strong word, but I think there could be improvements in its membership capabilities and tightening up of its user interface.
“I stuck with [development] because it's a marriage of the two sides of my brain: I feel it has a lot of leeway to be artistic and creative, but it's also very logical, precise, and technical. Best of both worlds.”
MQ: Tell us about your work in 140 characters or less.
LA: I design websites for an international roster of small business and non-profit clients, plus write articles and speak on various web topics.
MQ: What's your favorite thing about doing web development/design?
LA: The satisfaction of something I created actually being in use.
MQ: What do you do when you can't solve a development/design problem?
LA: If I can't, I pretty much either step away from the computer and possibly work out (because I'd procrastinated doing that for the day) or I chat with someone as smart or smarter than I am. Twitter is great for some puzzling conundrums.
MQ: Why use EE? How do you sell clients on using EE?
LA: I use EE because it makes my work easier, and my clients receive a lot of power and flexibility. As for selling EE -- I don't. Either I get inquiries from those already sold on EE, or I get a client who simply wants a website that fits their goals and functionality, and EE is the default system I provide them. As a professional, I try to avoid explaining why I use X, Y, Z because in the end it doesn't matter and we're splitting hairs. We have so many different tools in our arsenal, my favorite because of various reasons (heavily weighted toward its flexibility, power, and "natural feeling" workflow) is EE.
MQ: My favorite EE add-on is: __________
MQ: My favorite site I did in EE is: __________
LA: You're evil. Do I have to choose my favorite sister or future child? ;-) I'm going to say arpaonline.ca because it was my biggest project to date. I made EE bend to my will for that site and I think it looks great, too.
MQ: My favorite site someone else did in EE is: __________
LA: Too many to choose, really. Recent like is Method & Craft by Phil Coffman, Noah Stokes and Trent Walton for its beautiful simplicity but also its excellent content.
MQ: How/why did you get into web design/development?
LA: I started when I was a young teen, as most of us did, dabbling with fan sites. Mine was on Sailor Moon, and completely self-taught. I stuck with it because it's a marriage of the two sides of my brain: I feel it has a lot of leeway to be artistic and creative, but it's also very logical, precise, and technical. Best of both worlds.
MQ: What would you like to see happen with ExpressionEngine or EllisLab in the future?
LA: Most everything that's listed on: http://ellislab.com/feedback -- cop out answer? I say this because EllisLab seems to be listening to a lot of community feedback, has seemed to hire the right people (e.g. James Mathias as new CCO) to make some of the more urgent needs addressed. I don't know if I need to rehash everything that needs to be said, but I guess continue to be communicative, and focus on making a great product better, but not get bogged down by noise. Well, there is one major sticking point: they do need to ramp up and address support issues a bit better, mostly a response time/manpower issue I think, but I believe they're addressing that, soon, too.
Photo Credit: I, Timmy
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