Last time we interviewed you Erskine Design did not exist. What’s Erskine Design and perhaps more importantly, how is Ziggy the adopted cat, doing?

Simon Collison: I founded Erskine Design in October 2006, after four successful years at another agency, with the aim of building creative but ultimately very responsible websites. I’d always wanted to do things just that bit better and make my own decisions. I loved the idea of choosing the projects I wanted to work on, and to build a strong team around me, whilst always trying to deliver the very best value for money to clients. We’re now a team of six, including ExpressionEngine stalwarts Jamie Pittock (of Jambor-ee), Greg Wood and CodeIgniter fan Glen Swinfield, and we’ve had a monumentally busy first 15 months. I’m quite shattered right now.

As for the cats, unfortunately Ziggy moved to Cornwall and is now a professional surfer. Luckily I still have the mighty Bearface - an altogether more relaxed, less ambitious feline.

For those of us in the USA, give us an overview of what Frieze magazine is.

Simon Collison: The magazine has a global readership, but officially Frieze is Europe’s leading magazine of contemporary art and culture, including essays, reviews, columns and listings by the most forward-thinking writers. The magazine’s founders are also responsible for one of the main events on the art world calendar, the enormous Frieze Art Fair which takes place in London each October, attracting everyone from leading art buyers to supermodels who simply must be seen there. It’s epic.

What was your design approach to Europe’s #1 art and culture magazine? Was that a bit intimidating?

Simon Collison:I think it was a little intimidating at times. I’d subscribed to Frieze back in my art school days so I was very familiar with its importance, and for me at least it was a dream job. However, Frieze is run by an enormous team spanning several key departments and three cities, so pulling everything together was a big challenge from a project management point of view. Specifically, we ran several design workshops for each Frieze department, then moved on to wire-framing key pages and working towards more considered visual designs. It was tough, as there are already lots of excellent in-house designers at Frieze. Only once everything was mapped out in detail did we start building the structure using ExpressionEngine. Like we always say, plan, plan and do some more planning before implementing a single ExpressionEngine function.

Why did you choose ExpressionEngine for the site?

Simon Collison: There’s no reason not to choose ExpressionEngine. Its been the starting point for all web-based projects I’ve been involved in for the last four years, and there’s no exception at Erskine. Its great to just install that base level of functionality and security and start attacking the client’s wish list straight away. Knowing what can be done off the bat is very liberating, and its easy to get the team working towards common goals when ExpressionEngine is under the hood. I also knew exactly which plugins and modules we’d need to manage certain tasks. We’re using the Favorites and Tags modules for several odd tasks, and I recently plumbed in the new Fresh Variables module too, which we’re using to allow administrators to vary the weblog entry limit parameters site-wide, amongst other things. The list of plugins and extensions in use (both available and our own) is mind-blowing.

We also needed to integrate subscription-based access to the website, and for that we used aMember which allows users to register via very bespoke subscription groups, moving them in and out of certain groups automatically based on start and end dates etc. aMember provides a slightly confusing but successful plugin that bridges the gap between it and ExpressionEngine, so the ExpressionEngine database is continually updated based on member activity. Its a little hard to get your head around at first, but the key is that once a member logs in via aMember, they are also logged in via ExpressionEngine, with all member privileges updated on the fly, and then all the typical member-based ExpressionEngine stuff is at your disposal. Just don’t ask how we did it yet - the dust is still settling.

How is the Multiple Site Manager used?

Simon Collison: Yeah, huge thanks for releasing the Multiple Site Manager two days before we installed ExpressionEngine for this job. Phew! Frieze consists of three websites - Frieze Magazine, Frieze Art Fair, and Frieze Foundation. With a large team of administrators (some working across all three sites) we needed a simple solution for admin management tasks, and the MSM proved to be excellent. I like keeping all the weblogs separated by site for the client, which helps them focus, and the very granular approach to site-wide preferences and privileges opens up a lot of multi-site possibilities. It’s really powerful for the front end too, although we did need to hack it somewhat to allow searching across all three sites from one site at any time. Still one or two front-end things to sort out, but all in all it is a real blessing.

What aspect of the site are you most proud of?

Simon Collison: Possibly the visual design of the three sites, and how they all share certain conventions. I’m especially proud of the Frieze Magazine site, as that went through so, so many iterations and a truly rigorous design process. There are also lots of hidden parts of the grid ready to accommodate more advertising, and it is very scalable as a design. I’m also naturally proud of ExpressionEngine and how it has been used for such a ridiculously complex job, and the way it stood up to the intense traffic during the Frieze Art Fair in October. The Frieze team also seem to love it.

What beer did you use to celebrate the launch?

Simon Collison: We haven’t celebrated anything this year - we’ve been too busy! At some point this Christmas I’ll sit down with a glass of Malt Whisky and a mince pie and contemplate this year’s achievements. There are also too many ongoing things to work on and tweak with Frieze - it’ll never be “finished” as such.

Anything else you want to tell us about?

Simon Collison: Well, having spent 15 months solidly catering to our clients, we are looking at combining ongoing client work with some very ambitious internal projects for 2008. Jamie and the chaps have many ideas up their sleeves, including some very exciting uses of ExpressionEngine for new community websites. We’ll hopefully be launching Erskine Labs (yes I know, quite similar to “EliisLab” in name, but we grabbed that domain back in October 2006) which will be our fun-site, sandbox, and new blogs. Also, I see Jamie taking Jambor-ee to new heights, and you never know, maybe I’ll write that book about ExpressionEngine that everyone keeps bugging me about. Pigs may also fly. Essentially though, we just want to keep getting better and better, working hard but hopefully playing hard too.