About me

As you may have guessed already I am a freelance web designer and developer, based in the West Midlands. I also run Warwickshire web design business - Bright White Space.

Skills summary

  • Design - Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks
  • Front-end development - xhtml and css
  • Flash + ActionScript/xml
  • Back-end development - PHP/MySQL - PHP Frameworks (CakePHP)
  • Other - Director + Lingo, AfterEffects
  • Project management
  • Client handling

Availability & location

I am available for freelance web design and web development in the West Midlands area. Based in Stratford-upon-Avon I am within easy reach of Birmingham, Leicester, Leamington, Cheltenham, Oxford and Coventry.

My potted history

July 1999
Bought first computer and declared myself a freelance designer.

January 2000 - Coleridge Productions
Landed a job with Coleridge Productions, which was lucky because I didn’t get any work in 6 months as a freelancer!

Initially I started designing and building Flash websites, learning the basics of Photoshop and Illustrator. Director and Lingo followed, then came HTML and CSS. Because of demand I was asked to do some programming using their proprietary server-side language called Doddle. It came surprisingly easily and taught me the basic structure of web apps and development.

With a new taste for programming, I taught myself ASP.

All the while I was honing my design skills and expanding my Flash, HTML and CSS knowledge.

July 2002 - Spark and Zoom
In 2002 I was offered a job with Spark & Zoom, after developing their website on a freelance basis.

Soon after I started, I was introduced to the world of print design, which was a new and interesting challenge.

The Development of some e-learning software demanded a greater knowledge of Director, so I dived in further with Lingo. I also learnt how to deliver software on Cd-Rom with a installation wizard, serial number protection and user data storage.

In 2004 the e-learning software was then expanded for online delivery, which presented many challenges. To future-proof the project I decided to build the website in PHP/MySQL. So I pulled on my developer cap and taught myself PHP/MySQL. The front-end required a sophisticated delivery system, so I built a play-back interface in Flash (OOP ActionScript) that was powered by XML and communicated with the PHP/MySQL back-end.

Since then I have continued to develop my skills, switching from ASP to PHP as language of choice for most projects. Most recently I have been using the PHP framework CakePHP, which after a steep learning curve has proved to be excellent.

Along the way I have dabbled with AJAX and Javascript, but not indepth, just the odd auto-complete form and sortable list.

Working at Spark & Zoom also gave me invaluable knowledge about business and project management.

June 2008 - Freelance
I have now taken the plunge into freelancing full-time.