My dad often mentions my endless curiosity as a child. I studied objects obsessively trying to work them out. I like to think a fascination with design came to me at a young age. Much to the concern of my mother, I used to spend hours a time browsing pages on teletext. I didn’t have an obsession with memorising football results or recipes. I think it came down to a healthy (or unhealthy depending on which way you look at it) fascination with the primitive graphics that made up the pages, coupled with a childlike desire to explore a seemingly endless medium. I studied graphic design at Farnborough College of Technology, which had a very good department with some great designers and typographers lecturing. I learnt a lot from them. But it wasn’t until a friend had this crazy idea to start a web design company (how foolish we were to do that at 17 years old) that I turned my full attention to web design. Teenage angst took over and we didn’t last very long, but I was hooked. I read up on everything web development and involved myself in the web design community during the time when designers and developers were taking huge steps to introduce wider use of CSS and promote the philosophy of standards and accessibility. I liked this because it introduced rules and conventions in the interest of making the internet more usable for everyone, aswell as providing a more consistent development environment. It prompted me to develop in a more inclusive way. Now I’m equally as passionate about contemporary web design practices such as grid based and responsive design. I’m learning to design in a different way, in the browser, using CSS3 tools and for styling and new HTML5 tags for structure.My career started when I worked with research and co-creation agency Sense Worldwide to design and develop their company website. This led to a temporary role as web developer at marketing agency Underscore, and then a permanent role as designer for digital agency, PixelScene. Here I was involved in the design of the UKA website (United Kingdom Athletics) and designed the websites for an Audio Visual firm, and a local music festival, which was a lot of fun. My next stop was Mina UK, a womens fashion brand. Mina is a small niche brand focussing on original prints and vintage inspirations. I worked on the retail website – minauk.com. Embracing the brand values, I worked on keeping the website graphics updated, concepting and designing e-newsletters twice weekly aswell as marketing material for events, competitions and promotions. It was there, working for a small fashion brand with a niche appeal, and an even smaller budget for marketing, I developed a strong understanding of how to use social media channels to communicate the brand, involve customers, generate new leads and most importantly make sales. I also began to adapt my graphic design style to suit the quirky nature of the brand and the industry I was in. Gone were the corporate clients and IT companies, who were simply looking to communicate their value, and in came the requirement to project a lifestyle to forward thinking fashion consumers. A wholly different challenge I thought.
I’ve also worked on freelance projects, collaborating with my friend and graphic designer Tom Cuppage. we most recently created a website and branding for a musician who puts on private concerts.