My beginnings
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I grew up in Winchester (England) until the age of 13 when my family moved to Tring in Hertfordshire (also England). After finishing my GCSEs with a few As under my belt I headed off to West Herts College in Watford where I studied Law, Psychology, English and Fine Art.
In 1999, just before I headed off to study Animation at Wrexham University, my brother handed me a copy of Flash 4 which he'd somehow managed to get hold of. This became my passion during the next 3 years and it was soon apparent that although I didn't have the patience for traditional animation, Flash was a way for me to produce some really cool and creative results without hours of backbreaking camera work. In my 3rd year I changed courses to Multimedia so that I could concentrate on programming Actionscript as well as timeline animation.
In 2002 I exhibited some of my work at the D&AD New Blood exhibition and was awarded "Best of New Blood". One of the judges called me up and recruited me to produce some Flash viral work for Greenpeace and Ministry of Sound. For the next couple of months I worked as a freelance designer and Flash developer and was offered the position of "Head of Design" at an independent digital design agency in Derbyshire.
Fast forward 18 months and I get a call from David Bryant, the D&AD judge who had just become the Creative Director of...
I grew up in Winchester (England) until the age of 13 when my family moved to Tring in Hertfordshire (also England). After finishing my GCSEs with a few As under my belt I headed off to West Herts College in Watford where I studied Law, Psychology, English and Fine Art.
In 1999, just before I headed off to study Animation at Wrexham University, my brother handed me a copy of Flash 4 which he'd somehow managed to get hold of. This became my passion during the next 3 years and it was soon apparent that although I didn't have the patience for traditional animation, Flash was a way for me to produce some really cool and creative results without hours of backbreaking camera work. In my 3rd year I changed courses to Multimedia so that I could concentrate on programming Actionscript as well as timeline animation.
In 2002 I exhibited some of my work at the D&AD New Blood exhibition and was awarded "Best of New Blood". One of the judges called me up and recruited me to produce some Flash viral work for Greenpeace and Ministry of Sound. For the next couple of months I worked as a freelance designer and Flash developer and was offered the position of "Head of Design" at an independent digital design agency in Derbyshire.
Fast forward 18 months and I get a call from David Bryant, the D&AD judge who had just become the Creative Director of...
 | Publicis Modem (Modem Media) 2003 - 2005 I moved down to London in December 2003 after meeting my mancunian girlfriend Emma. Working at Modem Media gave me my first opportunities to work conceptually on a bluechip client (Hewlett Packard) and pushed my Flash programming and problem solving skills to new levels. I worked at Modem for just over a year under the watchful eye of Mr Bryant and won a few awards before being headhunted by... |
 | LBi (Née Wheel) 2005 - 2006 Just as they do in many industries, people move around within digital circles and two such colleagues of mine had moved from Modem to Wheel (I was to be the third). Here I worked primarily within a dedicated BT team but was also allowed out to play on Sony PSP, Starbucks and others. My focus shifted from Flash development to online advertising and concecptual work. I loved it and it fuelled my growing passion for digital marketing. My personal life however was pulling me in a different directon. I had been commuting back and forth between Manchester and London for over two years and my Young Persons' Railcard was about to run out. On the advice of my copywriter partner I sent my cv to... |
 | McCann Erickson 2006 - 2010 I'd moved up the creative ranks pretty rapidly up to this point and felt that it was time to settle down. So I bought a house, made an honest woman of Emma and worked within the ever-changing digital arm of McCanns. Within the next four years I worked almost exclusively on digital advertising creative for pretty much every client we had. I won some more awards and eventually ended up as a Senior Digital Art Director within the creative department. But four years is a long time in advertising and I needed a change of scene and some new clients to work on, so I followed my ex-McCanns Creative Director Wes to... |
 | The Distillery (A division of Reading Room) 2010 - present Enter a brand new, digital advertising and strategy-focussed division of Reading Room. I started work here at the beginning of 2010 and have already worked on some large-scale projects for Premier Foods, Teletext Holidays and Auto Trader. I am working conceptually on digital and integrated campaigns, combining this with my design and strategic planning experience. |
 | Bannerblog 2009 - present In addition to my full time work, I am also an international editor of the digital advertising Mecca Bannerblog.com.au, a Sydney-based blog which showcases the latest online advertising from around he world and stimulates debate and conversation from everyone in the industry from creative directors to Flash developers. |
| In my spare time I have also managed to keep my hand in with a bit of
front-end development and (for the geek in me) a bit of back-end site
work too. This in no way qualifies
me for that kind of work professionally but it gives me a glimpse of
the bigger picture around digital technologies and that in turn helps
to inform my creative work. So that's the story so far, It should give you a good idea of where I've come from and, to a degree, where I'm heading. Thank you for scrolling. | |
Recently added
This is the first campaign which I art directed and illustrated way back in 2005. The brief was to get across the simplicity of the BT Mobile packages...
This was the first PSP game site to be launched in the UK and it was great to be a part of it. The game's concept is essentially a 'Smash 'em up' w...
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