Career
I started developing websites way back in 2001 back when Internet Explorer ruled the world and MS Front Page was an industry standard. Both naturally and thankfully the way of the web has evolved dramatically since then and consequently so have my experience and skillset along with it.
Starting from my current role I'll take you back on a quick journey that is my career path so far.
Starting from my current role I'll take you back on a quick journey that is my career path so far.
Imagen Ltd (2013 - 2015)
I am currently working for a company called Cambridge Imaging Systems, who are a Media Archive Management (or MAM if you prefer) system provider based near Cambridge. Within the company I am currently working as the lead web developer and designer for all of the core product's web facing themes, think along the lines of the Wordpress theming system but a lot more complicated.
To give you an idea, some of our existing client include British Library, Imperial War Museum, Ministry of Defence, BBC and Channel Four.
I am responsible for producing both product based themes, that comply and represent the product in it's true form and also customer facing themes, which are often tied to a specific branding formation which often makes the process of making these two worlds collide a very complicated task indeed. It is my duty to make this happen but in a manner that we aren't misrepresenting the product or its functionality.
My time with Cambridge Imaging has also seen me working within a team of developers which has given me some good exposure to the popular Agile environment in which they use. It has also given me exposure to working with coding languages and techonologies that I'd never used or known much about before such as Python, C++ and technologies such as using REST calls and interfaces, AngularJS, and generally the whole world that is ingesting and processing media into an archive such as this, including live TV capturing.
On the whole this is a very new experience for me, no longer is the focus so much for me to provide a professional service to clients based on their requirements and specifics (although this is still required), but it's more focussed on building up the product and working with the natural progression of the product itself. My experience and knowledge in working to provide clients and my natural eye for design and strong UI/UX tendencies allows me to bring new ideas to the table for the development team and working to improve the user experience on the whole.
To give you an idea, some of our existing client include British Library, Imperial War Museum, Ministry of Defence, BBC and Channel Four.
I am responsible for producing both product based themes, that comply and represent the product in it's true form and also customer facing themes, which are often tied to a specific branding formation which often makes the process of making these two worlds collide a very complicated task indeed. It is my duty to make this happen but in a manner that we aren't misrepresenting the product or its functionality.
My time with Cambridge Imaging has also seen me working within a team of developers which has given me some good exposure to the popular Agile environment in which they use. It has also given me exposure to working with coding languages and techonologies that I'd never used or known much about before such as Python, C++ and technologies such as using REST calls and interfaces, AngularJS, and generally the whole world that is ingesting and processing media into an archive such as this, including live TV capturing.
On the whole this is a very new experience for me, no longer is the focus so much for me to provide a professional service to clients based on their requirements and specifics (although this is still required), but it's more focussed on building up the product and working with the natural progression of the product itself. My experience and knowledge in working to provide clients and my natural eye for design and strong UI/UX tendencies allows me to bring new ideas to the table for the development team and working to improve the user experience on the whole.
Transversal (2009 > 2013)
Prior to my current role I spent a strong four years as a web developer for award winning e-service provider Transversal, based in central Cambridge. Thier client base includes a number of blue chip clients including Barclays, BBC, Mothercare & Royal Mail.
Although our primary product is an intelligent Question and Answering knowledge base system using natural language processing the last 18 months has seen our working relationship with our client expand and allowed us to offer more to our clients, including:
- SEO consultancy and optimisation,
- HTML email and CRM mailout campaigns,
- Mini sites and RIA solutions
- Online surveys
- Mobile applications
- Internal portals and intranet solutions
- Digital correspondance solutions
They have a good relationship with of their clients which forms a firm bond for future development. My role within the company was primarily to design and develop custom user interfaces for the clients on the core product's framework, ensuring where applicable we sit within the tight branding or style guidelines of each client.
My role and time with Transversal role allowed me to take a step back from the rat race of churning out websites, quickly and effectively (although it was still very much of the essence) and take a dive into the nitty gritty of the likes of HTML and CSS and find out more about its heritage and how we've come to a world that just understand's each language.
Naturally my skillset grew with the company, as a designer I became more demanding across other departments. Whilst the majority of my work was based within the web team I was also working in a hybrid role across the board to in order to fulfill the design and development requirements of the other departments within the business such as sales, marketing and product development.
This has allowed me to expand my skillset and become more regularly involved in areas such as User Interface (UI) design, Print and literature design and Large scale print design (canvasses, banners, exhibition stands etc).
Cromwell Business Systems (2007-2009)
During this period I worked for an e-commerce provider based in Ely near Cambridge. Despite a very tempting offer from a television production company based in Peterborough at the time of interviewing my destiny was set in the world that is ecommerce.
As the leading designer with the company my immediate duty was to provide cutting edge web designs, graphics, logo's, artwork for print and HTML email templates however this was just a fraction of the requirement I was to end up taking on.
The development aspect of the role was by far the most advanced I'd ever dealt with and much of it was learning on job as the majority of the infrastructure was bespoke. To give you an idea of what was involved here are some examples:
The role itself also involved a lot of project management, customer meetings and accurate quotations. After 12 months with the company I also took on some added responsibilities as part of a promotion which saw me in a role overseeing the five strong web team.
As well as my day to day duties my additional role involved the day to day running of the department, dealing with critical issues, allocating work load and chasing up, maintaining and creating deadlines.
As the leading designer with the company my immediate duty was to provide cutting edge web designs, graphics, logo's, artwork for print and HTML email templates however this was just a fraction of the requirement I was to end up taking on.
The development aspect of the role was by far the most advanced I'd ever dealt with and much of it was learning on job as the majority of the infrastructure was bespoke. To give you an idea of what was involved here are some examples:
- Implementing current SEO trends and techniques
- Regular use of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP), working in a Red Hat environment.
- Developing a PHP Smarty infrastructure
- Converting existing XSLT based templates to PHP smarty
- Developing product feeds for the likes of Amazon, Froogle (Google Base) and Price Runner (primarily XML based)
- Integrating third party solutions to exisiting websites, such as RSS feeds, Reevoo product reviews and related content articles.
- Understanding the in house epos product and how it integrates with the online website
- Managing and maintaining XML based SOAP messages.
- Understanding of payment gateway solutions and how each provider differs
- Manual tracking of misplaced orders.
The role itself also involved a lot of project management, customer meetings and accurate quotations. After 12 months with the company I also took on some added responsibilities as part of a promotion which saw me in a role overseeing the five strong web team.
As well as my day to day duties my additional role involved the day to day running of the department, dealing with critical issues, allocating work load and chasing up, maintaining and creating deadlines.
Cloud Ten (2007)
After a strong year as a junior at my first web agency it put me in a good position to take the next step up the ladder and when the opportunity arose I grabbed the bull with both horns and took the leap.
In May 2006 an opportunity arose for me to join an award winning, well established design agency who were in a position to support and mentor me further where necessary.
The demand for server sided coding was far less as they had their own numbers of back end developers so the emphasis for me was to concentrate on the front-end side of things, learning more about CSS, (X)HTML, WCAG and designing websites to comply with company branding guidelines.
As a fully fledged print and new media design agency the role allowed me to get an understanding of how the other aspects of the business works. I spent much of my time working closely with Print and Graphic Designers, dedicated Flash developers, PR and Marketing departments and dedicated account and project managers.
It was a very eye opening experience working with graphic and print media designers. The whole way of thinking and approach to design was something completely different to that of web designing and its good to interact with them and understand their approach to a project.
2005-2006: Developer-in-training
After successfully building a few websites for clients as a freelancer I decided to go into web design full time and enrolled myself on a CIW foundations course to get me on the right path to my chosen career.
After spotting an advert for a Junior Web Developer in the local paper I decided to apply for it despite my lack of experience and to my surprise they offered me a position with the insight to train me on the job.
The role was with a small web development company who design and develop websites and web applications primarily for the public sector and government funded organisations. A large part of our support contracts also covered providing IT support & infrastructure, email accounts and support and web hosting.
Working in a live web environment with other designers and developers meant I quickly picked up the skills required for the role and my own personal skills brought new ideas and strength to the team.
To give you an ideas of the skills and duties involved in my role here are a few examples:
- Designing websites, logos and other online artwork using Photoshop
- Developing websites to current standards (Xhtml, CSS, Javascript)
- Understanding and further development of in house CMS and server related code such as PHP and MySQL
- Understanding of DNS and the whole propogation process
- Using Cpanel and Plesk for account setup and maintenance
- Building HTML emails and understanding email clients and how they differ and render differently.
Most of our web solutions were based on our in-house CMS which was primarily suited to creating dynamic, content driven websites however we were easily able to adapt it to handle ecommerce and product driven websites, intranet soloutions and custom implementations.
During my time with the company I also worked on several projects with another of the company's developers in an effort to advance my skills. These projects largely saw us building affiliate sites that allowed us to play around with XML, using CSV conversions and writing dynamic scripts to automate live website feeds from one to another.
Our final project together was a user controlled car trader website, where users could add the own vehicles and advertise them for sale. The user controls included photo uploads, description fields, google maps, vehicle age, make and model and most importantly the price.
Naturally my new role and side projects took up the majority of my time but i did however manage to rebuild my own website by utilising the new variety of skills I'd achieved. Finally I could kiss goodbye to the old HTML 'frameset' built website and introduce a nice new, bespoke PHP template solution and cutting edge redesign.
2003-2005: My web empire (well... almost)
Prior to my commercial roles I spent some time working as a freelance developer, building HTML based websites for local businesses and organistations who knew me through word of mouth.
Naturally I had my own website projects on the go too, one of which was gaining much deserved recognition both locally and nationally with regular appearances in modified car magazines 'Revs' and 'Max Power' eventually lead us to receive the 'Cruise site of the month' title several times in Max Power magazine which had a full article and screen shot all about the site.
In early 2003 I was approached by a local custom bodywork specialist who advertised and attended shows with the club, to build him a website for his booming body shop business. Along with this I was also planning a second website venture of my own for a music promotions partnership I co-founded, Darkside Connections. By summer 2003 I had three fully fledged websites on the go. It was officially the beginning of my career to be.
I took on another new project in 2005, my last before going full time into web design. A website for a new golf club and five star restaurant opening in the area. Whilst this was a straight forward HTML based website I was excited at being a part of the project, a feeling I still retain to this day when an interesting project arrives on my desk.
2001-2003: The early days
You may rememeber in my intro that I started building websites back in 2001. Well this came about when a friend and decided that our new local car club needed somewhere we could upload photos and announce news and forthcoming events. Neither of us had much knowledge of building websites or even using a computer but between us (an my computer technician brother) we managed to rustle up a basic, one page website using Microsoft Frontpage. Naturally at the time we thought it was amazing.
After a short while I discovered Dreamweaver MX and taught myself how to use it along with an FTP client and a copy of Jasc Paint Shop Pro. Within a few months and a lot of head scratching I managed to build up the site until we had enough content to start adding sections and regular reports and updates.
In the summer of 2003 we delivered our first official web site redesign complete with a structure and full navigation. The club naturally became very popular in the area, not only for being one of the very first clubs in the area but the first to have a website.
I have since found examples of these old website versions on a web based program called WayBack Machine, feel free to check out www.1stcruisecambs.co.uk for some examples of how my first ever web implementations looked.
After a short while I discovered Dreamweaver MX and taught myself how to use it along with an FTP client and a copy of Jasc Paint Shop Pro. Within a few months and a lot of head scratching I managed to build up the site until we had enough content to start adding sections and regular reports and updates.
In the summer of 2003 we delivered our first official web site redesign complete with a structure and full navigation. The club naturally became very popular in the area, not only for being one of the very first clubs in the area but the first to have a website.
I have since found examples of these old website versions on a web based program called WayBack Machine, feel free to check out www.1stcruisecambs.co.uk for some examples of how my first ever web implementations looked.