Today we are chatting with Matthew Smith, currently the creative director of Zaarly. Known for his online persona as "whale," Matt has proven himself as a great designer and influencer in the field.

Zaarly is a marketplace where you can ask for anything, set the price, and keep the community rooted by building local economy and helping each other out.

Follow Matthew on Dribbble and Twitter.

First up, why don't you tell the community a bit about who you are, what you do, how long you have been doing it. 

I'm the Creative Director at Zaarly, a place that's bringing business back to neighborhoods again, because life is better when you talk face to face, when you're not just a number. I've been drinking this kool aid for a little less than a year. Before that I owned Squared Eye for about 4 years. Before that I worked at a thrift store.

Poster design is a really fun, inexpensive and unique way to explore your creative side. From the 1,000's of fonts, variety of poster sizes, and layouts, sometimes, it's difficult to know where to start!

Once you master your design techniques visit Next Day Flyers for fast poster printing at great prices.

Today we are interviewing Jessica Sprague, design guru and owner of JessicaSprague.com. In February, Jessica is heading off a four week Poster Design course. She is also giving away not one, but TWO seats to this really awesome class! I couldn't be more excited about the class after taking Jessica's Subway Art class. I'm a busy mom, so I don't have a whole lot of time to join in a live class, which is why I love Jessica's classes- they are self-paced and available forever!

Follow Jessica: Twitter & Facebook

Can you tell us about yourself, how long have you been designing? Teaching? Do you have a job outside of JS.com?

In my former life I was a web & user interface designer for a software company, so I've been designing in some form or another for about 14 years. I started teaching digital scrapbooking, Photoshop, and graphic design in 2007 when I opened  JessicaSprague.com. Since then it is my full-time job, and I love it!

What three (or less) singular colors do you most identify with, why?

My favorite color is green - I love it in almost all of its shades from lime to olive. It's the color of growth and regeneration, of calm energy, of prosperity, learning, balance, and harmony.

If you had to describe yourself [currently] as a five color palette, what colors would they be? Could you provide me with HEX codes so I can create a JS palette for you? :)

I feel like I am a blue, two greens, and a red, coupled with a dark grey. Hex: aed835, d9ea65, 81c9c0, a90c19, a90c19

The greens I've already described. The blue is an ocean representing responsibility, stability, trustworthiness. The red represents fire and emotion, and the dark grey brings some gravity, but also represents the dark that balances the lighter, fresher colors.

If you could be a shape, what shape would you be? (i.e. a polygon = triangle, hexagon etc...)

I would be a 5-pointed star. :)

Erin Loechner is a writer, stylist and designer. She is a quirky girl with lots of style and a great swagger about her. Everything she publishes on her site, Design For Mankind, pushes the envelope just enough to keep you interested and excited about trends and styles. She has graced the pages of many magazines all the while keeping up with trends and colors on her HGTV.com segment.

First up, why don't you tell the community a bit about who you are, what you do, how long you have been doing it, and your background. 

I'm Erin Loechner, a 28-year-old freelance design writer and blogger (DesignForMankind.com). I dabble into styling, consulting and rearranging the furniture of any willing party! I'm also an online personality for HGTV.com.

We bring you a great interview with Jason Allen, of Haft2.com, an intriguing firm that focuses on, yeah, you guessed it, color! The focal point today is to showcase their 2012 Haft2COLOUR Calendar Project, and absolutely amazing piece of quality!

I was highly impressed with the presentation of the calendar. It was delivered in a nice silver tin with a branded paper wrap and a wonderful opening letter about the project and the Haft2 mission - I felt like I had just received a very nice gift!

Haft2 is giving away three calendars to some lucky winners on a fun challenge (see bottom of post). I would like to add that I just so happened to come across this project originally from the comments on our previous post about 2012 Calendar Print Trends. I just had to know more about it, see the real deal and get to know what Haft2 and Jason were all about. I'm sure glad I did.

Over the years Weddingbee has grown to become one of the top bridal communities, offering a space for brides to get inspiration, ideas and chat about all things wedding. Lover.lyis considered to be the new big thing in the wedding industry offering a place for brides to save inspiration they find.

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Cathleya is a motivated girl who helps both of these companies thrive day in and day out. And if that wasn't challenging enough, she still had time to chat with the COLOURlovers community a bit about trends, colors and how she got here. So, let's get started.

First up, why don't you tell the community a bit about who you are and what you do.

Hello COLOURlovers community! I’m Cathleya Schroeckenstein, the Editor in Chief of Weddingbee, a bride to bride blog and wedding community. I’ve been with Weddingbee since 2007, running the day to day operations of the site which includes a blog that updates 20+ times a day, a thriving bridal community and user generated galleries. In 2011 I also joined the startup team at Lover.ly, a curated wedding search engine and cloud scrapbook for brides, as Director of Community Relations.

Businesses large and small have embraced big color full force. Commercial Artist, Chuck Anderson, is a Photographer and Digital Artist. He has been a unique resource for many businesses since 2004, breaking the rules and becoming a design phenomenon. In more recent years, you might have seen Chuck appear in interviews as the Windows 7 brand designer for Microsoft.

'humanlike' - on Npandco.com

"I don't honestly think I ever actually decided to become a designer. I've just always been an artist - since I was a child. It's always been a part of me to create things." - interview from mocoloco.com

photos from interview with rapidgrowthmedia.com

What I've learned about Chuck is that he's just a regular guy and he was a regular kid (starting at 17) with a strong passion for creating, using color to the max and experimenting outside the box. Many interviews ask him how he got where he's at and he would answer that he still doesn't really know. From what I can see, hard work, being unique and obviously having a super cool personality has taken him a long way. We've pulled together some questions for Chuck that might help you, as an aspiring or even seasoned creative find inspiration and resources from. Enjoy!

The Interview

COLOURlovers: At the age of 17 you defined your image as NO PATTERN to give yourself some flexibility in who you were as an artist and what type of work you did. You are currently known for your freeness of style and expressive work with photography, light and color - do you still consider yourself as undefined as you were when you were 17 or 18?

NoPattern / Chuck: Yes and no. On one hand it's clear I've developed a distinctive style that I've come to be most recognized and hired for. I don't deny that, but I don't think it's in any way a bad thing. When I was just starting out at 17, 18 years old, I was so raw and completely still finding what it was I was going to be most drawn to, which meant a lot more in the way of experimenting. Now that I've hit a sort of groove and found what it is I'm generally best at, I just do my best to continually evolve that style and continue to develop it. However, the name NoPattern, at it's core, is the idea of always being in flux, never staying exactly the same and continuing to grow. I think that's something that I try to hold to in every project I do.

Some of you may already know our own sec9586, some of you may have just heard of her as the designer of the Betabrand plaid pattern, "Betabrand2" in our contest, "Color a Plaid Shirt Contest by Betabrand + COLOURlovers". Either way, we're featuring her today so you can get to know her even better!

Shawna Crouch, aka "sec9586", is the owner / operator of CrouchDesign. She attended Murray State University, where she graduated with a BS in Studio Art/Graphic Design in 2009, and specializes primarily in print design. Along with her designing day job, she runs a small shop on Zazzle as CrouchDesign, where she offers freelance design services. She also has an Etsy shop,  AquaNetNightmare, set to reopen September 1st, 2011 which will offer jewelry, cards, invitations, stationary and drawings.

Shawna continually uses COLOURlovers in every which way for both work and fun. Let's take a peek at how she does it...

I discovered Laura Berger's work very much by accident. I was visiting some close friends in Seattle and I wandered into a home store that carried her prints. The print I purchased was called Be Nice to Yourself (still available on her Etsy shop). Something about the design and the little creatures she created really captivated me, and I never forgot it. In fact, I held on to her business card, which was neatly tucked into the back of the bag the print was sealed in, and when I looked her up online I discovered a whole world of work she'd created, from paintings on wood to precious little dishes. In short, I wanted to buy everything -- and that's when I knew I had an artist on my hands that the world needed to know about.

Lucky for us here at COLOURlovers, Laura had time to speak to us for an exclusive interview in which she speaks about her creation process, inspirations, dreams of one day seeing her creatures as collectible figures and more. If you're as capitivated as we were, you can keep up with Laura on her Flickr page, through her blog (listed above) or on her Etsy page.

COLOURlovers: Do you remember the first time you created art? When was it?

Laura: I distinctly remember bringing home a giant fish that I made when I was in kindergarten.  It was made out of two pieces of fish-shaped brown kraft paper that we painted fish faces onto, stapled together, and stuffed with something or other to make it three-dimensional.  I showed it to my mom and then I watched Mister Roger's Neighborhood & ate a sandwich.

Since society seems to be moving at an ever-increasing speed towards going all digital, the thumb drive is like the file folder of the past, except more compact and much more stylish. Retailers have cashed in on the market for people's desire to have cool gadgets in their pockets, and you can find all manner of interesting flash device out there.

However, when you combine storage space with something like an MP3 player, ask your favorite designers to come in and finish it off with a great look, you may just find you have a product on your hands that really catches people's attention. Such is the case with Mugo, a line created by Aaron Atchison that features big name artists such as Julie West, Shin Tanaka, Jon Burgerman and more.