About Me
I provide creative graphic design services for both print and the web. If you require a SEO friendly website with a powerful but user-friendly CMS, a new logo, art direction for your campaign or simply some creative artworking, I can provide you with stunning graphic design
I go through your brief and tailor my approach to produce the best results for you. Every project I work on gets its own bespoke creative targeted for your audience. With 15 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 either from an open brief, or based around your existing brand or creative.
I am also able to provide bespoke music and sound design.
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
From 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 posters and leaflets for print.
Designing and building rapid e-learning modules with Articulate and Powerpoint.
Creating animated advertising banners.
Creating interface mock-ups.
Graphic Designer
Newsquest Media Group, Brighton 2004 – 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.
Artworker
The Argus, Brighton 2001 – 2004
Adverts and layouts, producing final artwork for print, pre-flighting, liaising with printers, database management.
Prepress and Reprographics
Archant Media, Ipswich 1997 – 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.
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, photography 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.
