A bit more detail about my work and interests

Born and raised in North East London, I now live in Sussex and work in the vibrant city of Brighton for a design agency called Makemedia. I grew up loving art and design, persuing this throughout school and into University. I graduated in 2005 from the University of Kent (Multimedia Technology and Design BSc) and have been working full-time as a web designer ever since.

I have over 5 years professional experience.

I'm able to tackle new briefs constructively, identifying what is required from me quickly and remain focused and organised throughout a project. I have a keen eye for good composition and can build a balanced design which I then work up with measured detail, trying to make those extra touches improve my work as often as possible. I enjoy keeping up-to-date with new web trends and technologies through industry magazines, blogs and attending conferences and expo's.

Web standards are important to me and like most modern web designers I endeavour to have compliant, valid and semantic code behind my designs.

My core skills are well composed & detailed website layouts and bulletproof markup and CSS. 90% of my work day is spent in Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator and Adobe Dreamweaver / Microsoft Visual Studio with the rest of my time used liasing with clients.

The websites I design at Makemedia are ASP.NET based, so I work with Microsoft Visual Studio daily and feel confident using it as my primary coding environment. I also know my way around Dreamweaver, often using it as a starting point for markup before migrating to Visual Studio. In the past I have also been lucky enough to head up the design and build of a couple of in-house CMS's which can be found in my portfolio.

Although i'm a web designer, I enjoy turning my hand to other areas of design when required. I have completed various email marketing campaigns, and in the past I have undertaken a number of print projects. Some of my print advertising work has been seen in national newspapers (eg: The Independant) and magazines (eg: Mens Health). I have recently started to dabble in motion graphics, using Adobe AfterEffects to create short adverts for digital signage.

Hardware wise, I use a PC running windows at Makemedia and a Macbook running OS X Leopard at home. I feel happy and comfortable using either.

My biggest interests outside of design are music, the world of cars (their design, culture & engineering), and golf (although I have a deadly slice!). A magazine addict, I subscribe to Computer Arts, .NET and Evo. I also like photography, and plan to get snapping more often once I invest in a nice digital SLR.

Design wise, I spend a fair bit of my free time tinkering with new ideas and working on freelance projects as they come along. These are usually web projects, but I still undertake occasional freelance print work ranging from leaflet design to exhibition materials and branding.

This website was built using my Macbook running Adobe Creative Suite. The design elements were put together in Photoshop and Illustrator, with markup and CSS coming together in Dreamweaver. All pages validate as (X)HTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1.

This website has been featured on cssmania.com, thebestdesigns.com, designm.ag, csscreme.com, cssbased.com, mostinspired.com, webdesign-is-art.com, designfridge.co.uk, spicywebdesigners.com and in the 'linkage' section (17/02/09) of the Cameron Moll website.

The Javascript effects you find throughout this website are jQuery based. The homepage uses Niall Doherty's 'Coda Slider' as a basis for the recent projects viewer, the portfolio page slider is based on Remy Sharp's (jQuery for Designers) 'Product Slider' and 'Fancybox' image viewer from klade.lv. The form on the contact details page uses a version of Mike Crittenden's 'Ajax contact form with jQuery'. Tooltips throughout the site use Jörn Zaefferer's tooltip jQuery plugin. Near-native PNG support with alpha opacity for browsers not supporting transparency (eg: IE6) is provided using the Twin Helix HTC PNG Fix.