PITCHING & PRESENTING
Having worked for myself over the last 10 years I have a wealth of experience presenting work and pitching concepts both visually, orally and in writing. I have made pitches to Venture Capitalists, Business Angels, Government Funding Agencies as well as wealthy independent investors. Through these pitches and presentations I was able to raise funding for my medical product; this was a medical devise to insert and remove contact lenses too and from a users eye, once the contact lens is removed the product would then clean and store the lens till its next needed. As well as pitching and presenting work to my clients I have also produced and prepared presentation material for clients including material for Board of Directors at British Energy (now EDF Energy), as well as producing concept presentations for Nokia and more recently Fuse and Hasbro.

I also have experience on building strong relationships based on trust with my clients, companies and partnerships to aid with the flow of ideas and collaboration work, ranging from producing prototypes through to aiding with joint ventures. The largest client I have worked for in this way for a number of years is EDF Energy (formally British Energy). My work with EDF Energy has been over a number of years and including Reverse Engineering, CAD modelling, animations and illustrations for engineering training through to internal branding and print where I have created internal marketing campaigns. During these projects I have been design lead though to managing and directing small teams of people.

Throughout my freelancing career I have developed the ability to work well independently on projects from idea generation through to completed and delivered products, However through self assessment I’m able to understand my limitations and to cover a full scope of work I have built a strong team around me when needed. In the past I have employed staff or worked as part of an existing external team to complete projects. I thrive on pressure and I’m used to having to make last minuet unforeseen changes on projects implemented by clients, adapting when issues arise and to date I have never missed a deadline.

GRAPHIC DESIGN EXPERIENCE
Over the years working under Principal Design I have developed a vast range of skill sets along a wide range of design disciplines to allow continual flow of work with my clients in a single environment. I have a keen eye for detail being known on website and software development projects as a ‘pixel pusher!’. I’m more than comfortable across all media in Graphic Design through to video production where I have a number of promotional videos that can be viewed on YouTube. I maintain up-to-date software licences and have extensive knowledge and experience in the Adobe CS suite. I also have a passion for typography where I have designed a number of bespoke fonts for my clients in the past.

The largest client I have worked with on a number of contracts is EDF Energy (formally British Energy) across the whole range of my expertise including internal branding for large scale multimillion pound projects happening on plant, creating, developing and executing promotional campaigns in both Print and Digital (web and multimedia screens) as a communication exercise to promote these large budget projects. The print work includes two large full colour ‘Post Outage’ books sent out to board of directors, station managers and all staff who worked during these projects, through to checkbook vouchers and Photo Phonebook Directories to name a few. Contracts also included Illustration work through to designing presentations that were pitched to executives within the company to help build positive thinking towards high budget projects. During these projects I have been design lead managing and directing small teams of people through to working solo on projects from concept to completion and execution.

I have lots of experience with branding; This ranges across the board in the whole process from coming up with the names for companies and products through to designing and creating brand identities for my clients from scratch producing branding guidelines, allowing a consistent form of identity and theme across all media including marketing, product, software and website. While designing a lot of identities from scratch I also have experience of created brands within strict existing guidelines for larger global brands which include Nokia and British Energy.

Typography & Icon design is an area I’m passionate about within graphic design, I strive to produce bespoke icons and typography while looking at branding my clients which also runs through into website and software design. I have design a number of bespoke typefaces for clients in the past all of which helps them stand out in a crowded market full of type focused logos and identities. I have found clients really enjoy the idea of having something no one else will have and is unique to them!

When designing websites in the past I have always designed them from the ground up creating my own bespoke templates, icons and assets. But I’m equally happy working within the confides of template websites and sizes determined by social media sites making my clients content work for them across all their communications with their users and clients. I have experience producing marketing material and campaigns across numerous websites, applications and stores all to aid spread their messages in a consistent manner to as many people as possible within their budgets.

Photo touch ups, colour correction, creative artwork and illustration (animations or still) are all areas I like to work in and comfortable producing work under a quick turn around with changing briefs. These are all standard things I will perform and used to across most, if not all projects. I want everything I put my name to looking as good as it can in the time frame available, I strive to eke out as much in the time allowed as possible to meet the high standard I set myself being a bit of a perfectionist.

While working with clients I have had to establish working relationships with a number of print houses, liaise with them on numerous print jobs from large scale individual prints to high volume print runs in various styles and methods of finished print on a range of physical media. For my clients I have more often than not managed these print run for them, arranging quotes, turnaround time, despatch and delivery.

PRODUCT DESIGN EXPERIENCE
I enjoy problem solving and enjoy the challenge of someone saying ‘it can’t be done!’ producing concepts across a range of industries including; Medical, Electronic, Consumer Products, Toys and the Nuclear Industry picking up a wealth of knowledge reverse engineering large complex machinery and working with engineers and project planners from numerous countries. When designing I like to brake everything down into its simplest form designing out any complications whether thats user interaction, form, manufacture of parts or assembly. With my most recent projects being ask to reduce steps in process or number of comments in assemblies (mechanical design work).

Having completed SolidWorks training in ‘Advanced Parts & Assemblies’ I have the skills required to offer a comprehensive skill set for all 3D and 2D design work, this can be designing straight into CAD software or with my keen eye for detail I can produce models from a napkin sketch, sketch model, test rigs all the way through to a full production technical drawings.

Throughout the design process I will produce numerous sketch models and rigs to prove design principles work and our sound, as the last thing I would want to pitch is something that wound not work or you are unable to manufacture. I am comfortable working in both large and small facilities working in Card, Foam, Wood, Plastic and Metal. When I have been unable to produce the rigs or prototypes I have experience working with and outsourcing to external companies to produce extensive rigs, prototypes whether handmade or rapid prototyped.

SOFTWARE DESIGN EXPERIENCE
I enjoy working in this area of design as it allows me to combine both areas of design that I’m passionate about, bring my product design degree and my graphic design skills with years of experience together. I have 4+ years experience in software design complimenting my career in Graphic and Product Design, I have a number of Software Design projects now live and in the public domain. My first contracts were commissioned by Panaramix with the focus on two of their products, Tools for Business and Kno-where. Both of these products were branded and designed as part of this contract, this included full product and company identity creating the brand all the way through to suggesting the final product and brand name of ‘Kno-where’ and following this I was consulted on for the final name for ‘Tool for Business’ which at the time was a product solely for Nokia.

All of the software design projects I have worked on to date I have been lead design on all the user interaction, user interface and heavily involved in the design of product features opening the opportunity to taking the product in other directions/industries. Panaramix has received great reviews on these two products with underlying comments on the look and feel for the product and the simplicity of the software’s navigation and user interaction.

On the software I have designed to date I have worked closely with the programmers and developers, making sure everything I am thinking of and design is possible within their personal constraints and time frames. When I have a system or a design they were unable to produce I have then worked with them to keep the essence of the design intent there and adapt the design with them to work within their personal programming constraints or time scales. This communication has been verbal and written but the majority of time visual working with wireframes, story boards, animations or more recently building the assets myself with Adobe Catalyst to show the actions in realtime. These are them passed onto the developers to link everything backend and tie into the database.

The key thing I strive for is to create good looking, fun, easy to use products with simple intuitive user interactions and journey through the software (I’m a big believer in ‘Keep It Simple’). I do this by designing and working through software workflows, trying to keep everything as simple and quick as possible, nothing worse for me than have to jump through hoops to navigate. I also try and think over how different people use software enabling different types of users to have the same results depending on how they like to use the software. Whether you like to use menus or your more an icon person you should be able to use applications, I love to see people using my software with a smile on their face as they go.

While working across these projects I like to be bespoke from project to project designing my own icons and assets for each software making sure every product is unique and sits and works within its environment for my clients brand (I’m not a template/copy and past designer). No matter what aspect my clients media their users are looking at, whether thats a marketing email, their website, social media site or their product I want it instantly recognisable as theirs! I try to establish this via bespoke icons and and branding cues. Designing icons is real passion of mine I love designing icons finding it a great personal challenge to convey a message without words and design it in such a way that is scalable working both very small and blown up large.