Simplify the complex, breath personality into the bland, and establish a strategic brand system your team can use.
No-code → Custom code. Websites built for teams, not developers, who want to build fast and keep complexity minimal.
Design for people, not designers
Do not become caught up with trying to impress your peers. They are not who you are designing for. Design for people who are looking to achieve a defined result.
Grounded design, not pretty speculation
Visuals play a big part in a design but the are not the design. Research, investigation and strategic / logical thinking are the basis of design.
Awards mean nothing; results are everything
Ignore trophies. Focus on results and not only will your target audience experience fulfillment, but so will you.
Be a partner, not a pawn
Earn trust as a clear thinker who delivers. Build your own things. Be self-governing, self-managing, and never become a pawn.
Test for substance, subtract anything that crumbles. Persist until you find something compact and powerful. Strive for conceptual simplicity to inform and amplify design.
Design requires a journey. It does not have a single obvious path and cannot be one-shot. Expect experimentation, tough questions, and unexpected directions.
I’m a business-minded designer; a builder and an optimiser. I love hunting for opportunities overlooked by competitors and taking full advantage with products, experiences, brands and systems. Coming from a poor British background, the ability to extract greater value from limited resources comes more naturally to me. It’s no doubt a core reason for my analytical mindset and my instinctual drive to observe. I find a pure thrill in solving problems that stump others, and I’m obsessed with learning and becoming less stupid.
I constantly find myself questioning the reason why myself and others do what we do, and this of course lead me to my interest in history and philosophy. While I love swimming in the realm of details found in design, I’m very much a practical and big picture thinker. I act in accordance with priority, focusing on making the most of time with MVPs and stopping once a point of diminishing returns is hit. In this way, you could argue I think more like a businessperson or an engineer rather than as a typical graphic designer.
There’s something magical about diving deep into research on a complex topic, and then formulating that into a simplified explanation the majority of people could understand quickly. To boil down the excess and be left with a powerful statement or knowledge accessible to all. This is something I both aim for and pride myself in. I also make great efforts to live in such a way that serves as a positive influence to those around me, whether in my immediate circle or floating around on the internet. This is both so I can be proud of how I’ve lived my life, but also to serve as a solid role model to my younger siblings.
Outside of design or more serious topics, I retain my status of an oddball. I love to free myself from a desk or a screen, to get out and walk, even if it is just the local park I’ve strolled in 100s of times. When I’m not in an intense focus mode, gaming proves to keep me child-like and free to explore new worlds — The Witcher, Deus Ex, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us, and the Souls games all hold a place in my heart.
If, for whatever reason, you wish to know more about me or how I think, you can read my writing and thoughts about a myriad of topics in Articles and Writings. You can also check out what books I’ve read in this website’s Book Library.
