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About Me
I provide design services for businesses, organisations and individuals. Whether you require a full-blown dynamic website, a logo, background music, art direction or simply some creative artworking.
Usually less is more and I like to tune design to the simplest, most direct response, but sometimes more needs to be more, so I look at briefs and tailor my approach for the best results for you. With 13 years industry experience and a strong interest in typography and layout combined with sound technical knowledge I am able to create stunning artwork in a variety of formats from an open brief, or to fit around an existing brand or creative.
Skills
- Excellent InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, QuarkXPress and Freehand skills. Experienced up to CS5.
- Considerable experience with Flash, Silverstripe CMS, Dreamweaver, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook.
- Sound technical knowledge of print techniques and how to maximise designs to suit various media.
- Good web development skills, able to build dynamic websites with a CMS framework using hand-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript and SVG.
- Adept at working as part of a design team and individually, with effective communication.
- Ability to work from an open-brief, and to bring out the best in an existing creative.
- Accurate with an eye for detail.
- Excellent image manipulation and retouching skills.
- Can work quickly from provided styles and templates, and produce clear templates and styles for others.
- Good organiser: able to manage deadlines and keep files in a clean, easy-to-follow state.
- Extensive knowledge of Mac and Windows systems.
Who I’ve worked with
Employment
Freelance Design and Artworking services
November 2009 onwards
Working freelance for businesses and agencies.
Designing and building bespoke dynamic websites with client-friendly open-source content management systems, in particular silverstripe
Designing and building rapid e-learning modules with Articulate.
Creating animated advertising banners.
Creating interface mock-ups and
Graphic Designer
Newsquest Media Group, Brighton Feb 2004 – Nov 2009
Working as a designer and artworker from wide ranging written and verbal briefs.
Often from conception through to final artworking, but sometimes taking on one role.
Designing and preparing print-ready artwork for a variety of media and finishes; from newsprint and glossy finishes, to web animations and bespoke one-off projects.
Range of project sizes: entire supplements, promotional campaigns, adverts, web banners, branding, covers, page layouts, posters and design templates.
Liaising directly with internal departments (editorial, promotions, advertising, photographic etc.) as well as external clients and print companies.
'Employee of the Month' award winner four times, and runner-up three further times.
Prepress Artworker
Newsquest Media Group, Brighton July 2001 – Feb 2004
Adverts and layouts, producing final artwork for print, pre-flighting, liaising with printers, database management.
Prepress and Reprographics
Archant Media, Ipswich Nov 1997 – July 2001
In Reprographics department prepared files for newsprint and glossy publications.
Learnt extensively about colour correcting, colour profiles, image retouching, pen-tool cut-outs.
Created photo-montages for covers and features.
Produced GIF and Flash web banners.
Moved into Prepress using Quark Xpress and Illustrator to produce adverts and layouts.
Sales
Eastern Audio, Ipswich Sept 1996 – Nov 1997
Sales, repairs, ordering stock.
Education
BA (Hons) Media and Cultural Studies
Southampton Institute 1993 – 1996
A mixed practical and theoretical degree.
Practical modules of the course covered production of video and audio, desktop publishing, the internet, photog- raphy and writing for media.
A wide ranging selection of theoretical disciplines were studied, and an emphasis was placed on how to use these to assist the creative process.
3 A-Levels, 10 GCSEs
Westbourne, Ipswich 1986 – 1993
