Born and raised in Bristol, I have always had a passion for drawing. During my childhood, I often entered painting and colouring competitions. There was never any doubt in my mind that my future would see me with a creative career of some description.
After finishing school with 8 GCSEs, amongst those an 'A' grade in Art & Design, I went onto study design and illustration at Brunel College of Design, Now know as 'City of Bristol College' during which time I picked up a BTEC ND in Technical Graphics and a college diploma equivalent to an BTEC HNC in Technical Illustration, this also enabled me to become a diploma member of the Chartered Society of Designers.
My first job was for Hardlines, a studio in West Oxfordshire specialising in the education sector. This is also where I got involved in web site design, passing an Open College Network course in HTML and producing the company's first web site. During 4 years with Hardlines I honed my skills, producing artwork, page layouts and designs for publications as well as interactive media.
Over the following five years I moved around gaining experience, initially as magazine designer for Baths Future Publishing, before being lured back to Oxford, for a spell in print and reprographics. Followed by a couple of years in London before settling back home in Bristol.
These London years offered some of the highlights to my career working as lead web designer for ex-radio DJ Peter Powell at the offices of Worldpop, where part of my responsibility was to attend Saturday morning TV show CD:UK, working alongside journalists and freelance photographers to update the website with the latest news and gossip from backstage, regularly sharing the green room with and Ant & Dec and Cat Deeley and numerous music industry stars. As the dotcom bubble was bursting for Worldpop I moved to HotGen Studios on their cutting edge online football management game for Sky Sports.
After the birth of my first child I decided it was time to move home. On returning to Bristol in 2002 I set up my own design studio, Born Dreaming, utilising all of my experience over the years this was a successful venture offering illustration, print design, and web as well as diversifying into other areas to fulfil demand.
However in 2007 I returned to full time employment and slimmed down Born Dreaming to smaller scale freelance projects. The reason for this move was to focus on bigger and better web based projects which I felt unable to offer as an individual.
I am now employed by soVision in Keynsham, Nr. Bristol as Senior Designer. As part of the development team I am able to produce fully interactive, functional websites and ecommerce solutions with back end web applications amongst other things.