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Today WebM.ag is speaking with Marc Perel from Obox Design, Marc co-founded Obox along with David and handles the developers role at Obox using a wide variety of languages including Coldfusion and PHP but to name a few. Marc is the second of three interviews from “The Perel Trio.”

WebM.ag: So Marc, Tell our readers a little about yourself and what you do?
MP: I’m the development side of Obox; I turn all Dave’s design work into functioning sites. My ‘specialities’ include Coldfusion, php and javascript/jQuery.

WebM.ag: What would you say where the best and worse experiences of your career?
MP: The best experience would be releasing Obox Themes after a month of non-stop hard work. The worst – having to reprogram our shopping cart at 4am after 50 hours of no sleep.

WebM.ag: What is your role in Obox Design, and what do you enjoy most about working as part of “The Perel Trio”?
MP: My role, besides programming, is most probably problem solving, and definitely being relaxed when we’re under tight deadlines. I don’t stress as easily as Dave, so I tend to try and calm him down now and then.

The best part of working with my siblings is how well we work together, we never really get in each others way or have big fights or anything of the sort.

WebM.ag: What project are you currently working on?
MP: A new theme called Briefcase.

WebM.ag: What tools could you not live without?
MP: Dreamweaver and the Firebug plugin for Firefox, it saves loads of time.

WebM.ag: So you started off with Coldfusion, then picked up the other languages. What is your favourite language to work in now? And why?
MP: Still coldfusion, the markup is super clean and rapid deployment is easy to achieve since it’s quite a simple language. And it does everything that php can do too.

WebM.ag: Away from Obox, what do you do to relax?
MP: Probably not relaxing per se, but I’m a cyclist and a runner. If I can’t exercise I get quite anxious.

WebM.ag: Are you self taught or did you attend college/university to learn your skillset?
MP: Self taught. Thrown in the deep end by our father. When I left school I worked for him on his company’s website http://peresoft.co.za . He’d give me some hectically technical pages and say “fix it” even though I’d never coded before. I always say “Google was my teacher.”

WebM.ag: Who or what inspires you most?
MP: Positive feedback by people who use our stuff is definitely one, and another would be cool ideas (nothing wrong with a bit of day dreaming.)

WebM.ag: What advice would you give to a newbie starting out in design?
MP: If you’re starting out as a developer I’d say don’t be closed minded to others ideas, there’s always something you can learn from what other people have done already. Also, don’t blind-copy things, if you’re going to use a plugin or some one else’s code at all, try re-engineer it a little, tighten it up, and generally learn to understand it, as opposed to just regurgitate what they’ve done.

WebM.ag: Tell us something about you that you haven’t mentioned in an interview before?
MP: Hmmm, that’s a curve ball? I can’t work late on a Monday… It just doesn’t happen.

WebM.ag: So what can we expect from you going into 2010 and beyond?
MP: More of the same really, we’re always thinking of new ideas and ways to innovate the market, but with us ideas don’t last long before they’re put into action. ie Planning far ahead isn’t our style, we plan and execute at the same time! After the some down time in the off season we’ll have a better idea of what we’ll aim for in the new year.

Quick Fire!

Music Of Choice? House Music – local DJ’s Craig da Sousa, Euphonik, Kent and Harael Salkow all rock my socks off. Otherwise there’s local duo Goldfish. Besides that, most music as long as it’s not too hard core.
What are you reading? I was reading a book called my ‘Sentanced to Hell’ but it’s too depressing, I’ve closed it. In search for a new read. Any suggestions?
IE6, love or hate? It’s part of the job I guess. But I don’t like it.
PC or MAC? PC
Facebook or Twitter? Business – Twitter, Personal – Facebook

A Big Thank You To Marc!

Thank you for taking time out to chat with WebM.ag, if you wish to read more about Marc or about Obox Design and what they do you can visit Obox here: obox-design.com or you can keep up to date with the latest Obox news or speak to Marc via Twitter: @MarcPerel

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