I am a half English, half South African freelance digital designer, online entrepreneur and most recently a husband. I am currently living and working, not in a nutshell (although it often feels like it), but in South West London, UK.I was educated in Cape Town. graduating in 2003 with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, majoring in Information Systems, at the University of Cape Town. Before that, in 2000, I completed a digital design diploma at the famous Cape Town design house, Hirt & Carter.
Between 9 and 5 … and very often later
I work from my London abode designing stuff, mostly websites…
The last few years I’ve been doing freelance digital design work for international clients, but over the last year I’ve concentrated on growing my own business ventures. So I can take holidays. And get paid. Read more about both my online projects here.
I’ve always been my own boss since I left university. I started my first business, a Cape Town based I.T. company called Gravit8 Information Technology with two fellow graduates. Quickly I realised I was definitely more creative than technical and the business was growing in the computer networking area. I decided to pack my bags and move to the UK. Travelling and networking with as many like minded digital designers as possible and lapping all the international web trends.
My interests
The view of Table Mountain, Super 14 rugby and summer braais, a walk on a sandy Cape Town beach with George (the best golden retriever ever!), fast cars and gas guzzling Hummers, Apple gadgets, my Canon SLR camera and slow shutter speed shots at night. I also have a fetish for pushing pixels around in Photoshop, then cutting them up into weird shapes and sizes and pasting them into websites.
Intriguing? I hope so, please have a good look around and hopefully you will find some of my posts interesting …
Random facts
- I love my wife, my Apple gadgets, and biltong… usually in that order.
- I break into a cold sweat when I see Comic Sans font being used on restaurant menus and in company logos.
- I’ve always done my own thing and never had a 9-5 job with an irritating boss, I used to be a mobile disc jockey for 21sts and wedding celebrations during my university years.
- I’m inspired by business mavericks who think big, who think out of the box, and who don’t stop fighting for it until they get it.
The geeky details of the Digital Farm
- The site design was brainstormed and then conceptualised in Photoshop. Then spliced and diced in my html editor of choice – Expresso.
- The wordpress theme is based on the framework we use in all our WooThemes, developed by our Wordpress wizard Foxinni.
- My awesome header and footer illustrations were designed by the talented, Cape Town based illustrator and cartoonist, Alex Latimer.
- It uses the wonderful Wordpress, with a variety of plugins, for its content management.
- It’s designed with web standards in mind, and every page should validate with those XHTML and CSS things.
