Interview with Bashaar Aweid – Owner of Planet Renders

By: Michael Dunlop     Topics: Entrepreneur Interviews

Planet Renders is basically a community and resource site made for web graphics designers and digital artists.Please introduce yourself: (Where do you live? What is your age? Who is Bash?)

Well my name is Bashaar Aweid and I am a 17 year old student at a sixth form college in Berkshire (England), studying mainly sciences and Computing.

Tell us about your main project, main website, what gave you the idea for it?

Planet Renders is basically a community and resource site made for web graphics designers and digital artists. It started off quite a long time ago (almost 3 years) when I was a member at a graphics community/forum (called Iced-Designs, in case anyone remembers it) %u2013 that’s where I really got into designing. At that time it was just a really small site made only to display my own “renders” (the term in this context is used to describe cut-outs of images that people can use in their own graphics etc.). I then realised that it would be a lot more useful to artists/designers if the site was actually a collection of renders from other people in addition to mine, so I began to let others upload their work as well.

From then on it just kept gradually growing and growing and at the same time I learnt more and more about web design and development. In retrospect, I think the most significant change for the site was when we finally decided to add a discussion board. This actually opened up a lot of potential paths to expand the site, allowing it to grow into the size it is today.

How did you start off on the net? What age were you when you started?

Hmm, well the stage when I began to use the net seriously was probably when I was about 13/14. As I mentioned before, it was mainly all the forums on the net, especially the gfx ones, that sparked my interest to get into designing and website development.

What was your first project?

Apart from the little GeoCities sites that I started off making when I did not know anything about HTML, the first real one I made was a simple personal site with photos, forums etc. made really just for friends at school.

What advice do you have for someone who is starting web design/ web development or setting up a business online?

In terms of web development, firstly I would say you have to be truly committed to the sites you make. You should not give up just because your still not getting any traffic after only a few weeks, it takes a lot more time than that. Also, I’d recommend actually building sites that are about something you are interested in or have some experience in. That way you can understand your users a lot better and be much more involved in the site compared to starting one based on a particular topic that you think will be easy to monetize.

For web design, I would advise to just practice as much as you can at fully designing sites. Also try to get into the habit of checking if your code is HTML-compliant (so that the code works in all browsers), that’s a really good thing to start doing from the start.

What would you do differently today, if you started your main website again?

I think the main thing I would do differently is to actually plan out the site, and its future, a lot more than I did. The mistake I made was that I only did things as the site grew, instead of planning ahead. Which meant that there were many things I realised I had to change about the structure of the site only to find out that it was too late.

Tools of the trade? (What software do you use)

Photoshop
Illustrator
Cinema 4D
Dreamweaver/Notepad (only use dreamweaver because it presents the code in a nicer way xD )

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Well I am into Tennis and I try to play it as much as I can. But I mainly spend the time just hanging out with friends, watching movies etc. I used to be really into online games like CS and Battlefield 2 but I seem to have lost interest in them.

In addition to your main site / project, do you have any other Online Projects you are currently working on?

These past couple of years I have been really swamped with school/college work that it is been nearly impossible to get enough time to work on some extra projects. Nevertheless, quite recently I have been attempting to buy sites, redevelop them and then usually just sell them off again, and currently I am working on a small tutorial site that I am hoping to sell off later on. I do have a few ideas for projects to start in the future but I have yet to have the time to really think about them.

Visit Planet Renders at http://www.planetrenders.net