Well my career has been a fairly simple, direct and thoroughly enjoyable one to date, I’ve loved every job I’ve had and have always given my heart and sole to the company I work for. Here’s the breakdown:

February 2008 - Today - Fully Illustrated Ltd

Owner

The dawn of a new beginning. Fully Illustrated was born in 2005, initially as a small flash site to show some of my work. As the years went on, it developed into what you see today. As of the February 2008 Fully Illustrated went Limited and as of 26th May 2008, it has become a fully fledged, full time creative business :)

I am one of life's people that never really 'grew up', I still get excited by silly things, I still watch cartoons, read comics, play computer games, but above all, I just love to create. If I'm not working on project work, then I am creating a project for myself, I love the creative industry and can now serve it in my very own and hopefully very original way.

I am truly overjoyed to be able to offer my services to the world and have already been lucky enough to work with some simply amazing clients from all over the globe. I have big plans for this little company. My goal is to offer all my 'big agency' skills and experience at an affordable price. Allowing the high end rich creative services, that usually cost a sheer fortune, to be offered to a much wider audience at a much more affordable price. Everyone should be able to access great quality and individual passion.

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November 2005 - May 2008 - Lightmaker.com

Head Creative - Feburary 2007 - May 2008

My time at Lightmaker was great. I started out there in 2005 heading up the creative team for nearly three years. It was a great experience to help build and grow their Manchester Studio from around 5 people up to around the 20 that are there now. When I joined the business back in 2005, I was tasked with building a world class design team and taking them to an award winning level. This was a monster challenge indeed and at the time, quite daunting too. Lightmaker was already an incredibly established name at this time, so to build another creative team to the same level as the other studios in the group was going to be tough work indeed. I was already preparing myself for a position that was going to dominate every minute of my life.

The company doesn't have a 'Creative Director' in their structure, but has Head Creative instead which is there closest role. The main part of the role was to, well, creatively direct, represent the business from a creative perspective and be closely involved in the day to day running of the business/projects. I look back with real pride to be able to say that I was there from the beginning.

As the years went by the design team grew and grew in both size, ability and passion and by the time I left in May 2008 was quite simply the most effective, multi skilled and passionate design team I'd ever had the pleasure of working with. We won a number of awards over the years, Dope, CWA, Big Chips and took huge pride in every one. Our goal on every project was to create something beautiful, effective and hopefully award winning.

The team at Lightmaker are a great bunch and are hugely talented in every area that they specialise.

I wanna say a big thanks to all the guys and girls at the Manchester Studio for being brilliant and making my time there as enjoyable as it was successful...I wish you all the greatest luck for the future!!

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May 2001 - October 2005 - 3T Productions

Senior Designer – 2005

Designer – 2002

Graduate Designer - 2001

My first love.  3T was simply a stunning place to be.  The work was as creative as one could wish for.  3T allowed me to flourish, grow and progress, this was in part due to an equally stunning team.  Everyone was so skilled in their field, I was lucky to work amongst some brilliant designers, developers, project managers and my Creative Director Alan Carpenter was a fantastic mentor and to boot, an excellent designer, I learnt almost everything I now use as a manager from this man.  Cheers Alan.

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September 2000 - April 2001 - Dragonphly

Graduate Designer

This is where I earned my wings. I have great respect for Dragonphly as without this break, my first break, I would not be where I am today. I left uni very raw, I had high hopes of changing the world and dragonphly gave me some great opportunities to learn the core skills I needed. A lot of first jobs within design are simply tea making and page chopping, well I was really lucky here, I got to design everything from flyers, letterheads and business cards, right through to full exhibition stands. These jobs were daunting to say the least, but it was here that I learnt just how much enjoyment I got out of new and demanding opportunities. Most importantly I got my first commercial illustration job here and it was from this point onward that I knew I HAD to become an illustrator. Thanks Dragonphly.

P.S. Yes, I also designed the logo :)