1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
I’m a designer from Brazil currently living in Oakland, California. I moved to the US in 2011 when I got an offer from Google. Since then, I have been working for them. Before that, in 2006 I founded a personal blog that ended up growing more than I’d ever planned. Abduzeedo started as a side project and it has always kept that status, it is a blog where I can share things that inspire me. Over the past 10 years, a lot has changed and with that, the blog has evolved as well.
2. How did you get into design? Was there a pivotal point in your life when you decided to become a designer, or was it a gradual process?
My background is industrial design, and I think the reason I got into design was because I was always curious. I also have to thank my parents, especially my dad for always nurturing a sense of curiosity in my brother and me. Then, when i got my first computer and discovered some early graphic software, things became much clearer for me and this led to my desire of creating things using my computer as a medium. Of course, when I chose industrial design, to my surprise, I had to learn to do things without the computer first. I got a bit frustrated, but that was a sign of my naïveté. Now I really appreciate those days and what I learned.
3. What’s the most exciting project you’ve worked on so far?
I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on so many cool projects. It is hard to pinpoint one. I always try to put myself in very uncomfortable situations so I can learn the most. Of course this inevitably has resulted in some awful mistakes, but that’s the only way to gain experience, in my opinion. But to answer your question I will say Abduzeedo because it is my personal project and the one I’ve run the longest.
4. How did Abduzeedo start, and where do you see your publication in 10 years from now?
Abduzeedo started after my design studio in Brazil got robbed. We left for lunch and when we came back our studio was empty. All of our equipment was gone. For me it was even worse because that day I decided to back up my files so I lost all my backup discs as well. It started as a backup system, way before the cloud was something. There was no Dropbox, iCloud or Google Drive. I used a server and the blog to backup files in which I would write little tutorials so I could remember how I did certain things in photoshop. It ended up taking off, luckily.
After 10 years I’ve seen quite a lot of things. The blog reached its peak in 2009-2010. It was really massive the amount of traffic it was getting. Since then it has been on a decline but I believe it is more a filtering process. The web became much bigger and the long tail is simply huge. There’s a lot of information and ways to get it. That ended up fragmenting the blogosphere in terms of traffic. My goal is to keep running with Abduzeedo until the point it doesn’t make more sense for me.
5. You probably get this question a lot, but what is like to be a part of a company like Google? Do they really have slides in their offices?
Google is an amazing company. I have learned so much in so many ways. From all the incredibly amazing people to the scale of the projects and how to design for billions. It’s much more challenging indeed. The company’s culture is also incredible and we do have slides in some of the offices. 
6. What’s the most interesting project you’ve had on Google?
I got the chance to work on quite a few projects, from Google Search to the most recent one that is Google Play Music. Each one with their particular challenges and requirements. I cannot get too much into the details, but designing for a very broad audience is always a big task and that really gets me motivated.
7. Where do you see the graphic design industry going? What is going to be next year’s graphic design biggest trend?
I feel that the industry is moving towards simplicity. I cannot speak too much about graphic design, but in terms of user interface we see this evolution quite clearly. From the beginning of mobile UI with the iOS and now you can see how much simpler the visual design became. There’s a constant movement towards reduction. The challenge is to do that without losing user’s understanding of how to use the software. As the audience gets more mature and savvy, it allows us to experiment more with this type of exercise.
8. Aside WebDesignLedger, where do you get your inspiration from?
More and more I try to find inspiration from the physical world. With the overload of information online I sort of started to lose my capacity to pay attention to the small little things that are so inspiring in our quotidian lives. From nature to books and architecture. There’s so much out there to be seen, and the most beautiful thing is that it’s unique to your eyes and brain to process that.
9. What are your current hobbies? What are you most curious about right now?
I became a father a little over 9 months ago and right now my hobby is to be a father hah! It takes most of my spare time for sure but it’s just awesome. I also have been learning to prototype in native Android with Android Studio. I feel that the design community focus so much on iOS and there’s a huge need for Android as the main mobile OS>
10. Tea or Coffee?
Coffee.
Read More at Fabio Sasso – Interview
from Web Design Ledger https://webdesignledger.com/fabio-sasso-interview/
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