Back to Design
I started out in this industry as a designer. I stumbled across Photoshop accidentally when designing a poster for a dissertation presentation of a 3D animation I had created in 3d studio max. From there I proceeded to teach myself graphic design, landed a job in the web design industry and haven’t looked back. For the last year or so I’ve been employed as a web developer, in a role that involved almost no design work whatsoever and I have an urge get back to design.
I’ve been keeping up with design as well as doing design work in my own time. I’m not really that great at the back-end stuff a web developer has to do beyond the day-to-day stuff. I’m more of a visual thinker than one who likes numbers, equations and algorithms. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the challenges back-end coding can bring but I’m just not passionate about creating session variables, dealing with cookies or preventing SQL injections. It isn’t my thing. My thing is designing and front-end coding. I love to be involved in the aspect of web design and development where you can have more of a positive effect on the way a website feels and is experienced.
I want to solve clients’ and users’ problems rather be told to implement said solutions. I feel like I don’t have the same freedom as a full time developer. Sure, developing is almost all about problem solving but it’s almost always only to reach a goal decided by someone else, not one you’ve solved yourself.
Factory Media
I also want to work on something interesting. For the last year I’ve been working on corporate, investor relations websites. Not exactly exciting or what I would call a passion of mine. So I’m pleased to announce that from next month I will be working at Factory Media who specialise in action sports media. Slightly different to the corporate world! My role is senior front-end designer and developer and I couldn’t be happier to start doing the things I enjoy most about creating websites. I’ll also be working with WordPress, another love of mine.
Back to the Mac
Those of you who follow me on Twitter will be pleased to know I won’t be complaining about Dreamweaver as I won’t have to use it anymore! My ultimate goal is to never use it ever again. The icing on the cake is that I’ll be working on a Mac again. Finally. As a designer, all versions of Windows frustrate me on a daily basis. No more! Apple’s design is what made me fall in love with design in the first place so it will be good to be back.
All in all, things are looking up and I’m looking forward to the future.