Azem William, the web-design genius, makes everyone feel good. Listen up!

In your eyes, what makes a good design?
Design can be good for many different reasons, because it's nice to look at or easy to use, useful, clever, funny, weird, scary, fun, and so on. I like a lot of things in design. I suppose what I like about it most is if it makes you look at something in a different way, or if it makes you see something you never noticed before. I don't fetishise design or designers. I think when you start taking things too seriously it stops being fun.

What's the lamest site you ever saw?
I love the internet, and I love all the little websites that people make. I find an old lady's website about her favourite hats a lot more interesting that a flashy site with lots of smooth animations everywhere, that has 'aren't I clever' written all over it. I can't remember what the lamest website I ever saw would be. I usually find something interesting on most sites, something funny, something weird, something that makes me go eeeewwwh, or something that makes me think "what the fuck are they doing?"

You are one of the sunniest people I've ever met. What is the secret of your good-naturedness?
I just hate being depressed

Can you tell me something memorable about being in Surinam?
The first thing I think about when I think of Surinam is that it is as if there is much more sky. You can see really far away because there aren't many high buildings, and people live quite far away from each other, so there is a lot of open space. It is very green and tropical and it smells lovely. Most of my family still lives there and I don't see them very often which makes me sad.

Can you say a bit about how the Dutch family portrait came about?
The picture was taken sometime in the eighties. I think '86 or '87. It is taken in a small touristic fisherman's village in Holland, which is known for its traditional Dutch costumes. There are lots of photo studios where you can get your picture taken wearing the traditional Dutch costumes. My parents took us there for a day out, especially to get our photo taken. My Mum and Dad love dressing up (and dressing me and my brothers and sister up too). They still take silly photographs of themselves wearing masks and stuff and send them to me. I love this photo and it still makes me laugh every time I see it. There are a lot of funny things about it. It is a complete piss-take on al the typical Dutch souvenirs with the stereotype pictures of blond Dutch farmers wearing clogs. It was a way of saying: "We are Dutch too." You can see on our faces that we are all trying not to laugh, especially my Dad (it was all his idea!). My oldest brother is missing from the photo, because he was in puberty and he couldn't possibly be seen doing something uncool like this. My sister looks like she hasn't got a clue what's going on. My Dad is planning to take us all back there again soon to have our picture taken again.

Is there anything else you'd like to say?
Umm... I was just thinking about the first thing I remember about you. It is that you were pointing at my hands and feet and shouting: "Oh my god, look how tiny you are. You've got tiny hands, you've got tiny feet. You are SO TINY!" And later you laughed and laughed when I told you that my sister was called Joyce because you thought it was such a typical drag queen name, haha. That still makes me laugh. My Dad once told us that if he was a drag queen, he would call himself Vicky.

PS. I have attached a recent pic of me and my sis. My sister and I always take self-portraits of each other and I like this one because it is one of the few that doesn't have the top of our heads cut off, like most of them.