web design & development
After graduating from Plymouth University with a tasty first class degree in Digital Art and Technology I was snapped up by Team Rubber to work as a web developer. Team Rubber is a creative digital agency that specialises in advertising, film production and the side I was most involved with - web development for consultation software. I worked there for 2 and half years and in that time I worked on projects for local councils and governments, nationally and internationally. I have even been fortunate enough to work for the Obama Administration.
Fast forward to the present day and I have left my rubber companions to start my own adventures. I have an unusual mix of both artistic and technical skills and use them to make well thought out solutions. My company mantra is simple - make kick-ass stuff and have very happy clients.
Good design does not start in Photoshop. It starts in conversations discussing the current issues and the future goals. Making a website pretty happens at the end of the design process, first we need to understand what problems we're solving. This begins by writing user stories - they define what functionality is needed and help prioritise the important stuff. Next is to look at the content, by understanding the type of content and how it will be used leads to better information architecture. The interaction design between the user and the website has to be planned so that it's easy to accomplish tasks. A successful website should help the user and be easy to use.
The final stage is the visual identity. A website should be so inviting that people will want to engage with it. But there's no point putting tasty topping on bad cake, the foundations have to be in place. The visuals should compliment the interface design by making it easy for the user to understand what to do. It is very much the case that function precedes form.
A website needs to work. For starters the content needs to be semantically marked-up correctly and ordered logically. This is the single biggest factor for helping search engines and users who use assistive technology understand the content. The skin of the website should look good in all the major web browsers. This does not mean look exactly the same because older browsers just can't do all the snazzy stuff that modern browsers can. We want to give the user the best experience possible, so if they're using a modern browser they get extra icing. Apart from that, a website should behave as expected and be error free, nobody likes software bugs, although radioactive spiders that give superpowers are fun.