7th January 2009 / 10 Comments »
At the tender age of 22 I consider myself to be privileged. I love being a freelance designer and have loved it ever since I got into it. Like most designers at times I’ve found it hard at times, the market is a tricky one and the work isn’t always as ample as you’d like but with no one to answer to, being your ‘own boss’ at such a young age has its perks.
I’ve been a freelance designer for about 5 years and most of this time I’ve spent working my way up to a period of steady work and reliable clients. The reason I’ve managed to squeeze 5 years in is unlike a lot of young designers I never went to college or university and I didn’t serve my time with an agency, instead I worked with businesses and contacts I met through my other company Rebelo from the word go and to cut a long story short over time I taught myself what I needed to make sure I was delivering on every job.
It wasn’t a walk in the park and at times I felt like I was in well above my head however today when I meet newly graduated designers I can’t help but think I’ve had it easy in comparison. In the last 2 months alone I’ve spoken with 5 local designers who finished their studies more than 12 months ago but are still struggling to find a job and get their foot on the first rung of the career ladder. With qualifications ranging from A-Levels to Degrees and the talents to match I can’t help but think that if this was any other sector they’d be offered reasonably paid jobs in a snap.
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29th December 2008 / No Comments »
Bloody what a year 2008 has been! Of all the time I’ve had as a full-time-self-employed/part-time-self-employed freelance designer the last 12 months has been the best yet. I’m not planning to launch into a ‘what did it all mean’ analysis of everything I’ve done since January and whether or not I’ve achieved my goals, but I thought since I never managed a pre-Xmas post then what better way to wrap up the year.
Among other things in 2008 I was privileged enough to be involved with projects like amazingtunes and experience working with an Internet start-up and be involved with smaller side projects like Design Forums. This year hasn’t been easy but it has been busy, unrealistically busy, so busy I’ve had to put some of my personal projects totally on hold to make room for everything else, but the fact is I’ve enjoyed every single minute of it (even the long hours).
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10th December 2008 / No Comments »
Just a quick one to say how stoked I am that www.mrleesimpson.co.uk made it on to CSSFlash, the CSS-best-of-the-web gallery-thing.
This is the second time I’ve been listed on this specific site, the first time around being for my work with copy writing company All Words, and its always nice to see your work featured along side some truely awesome website designs.
Thanks CSSFlash!
5th December 2008 / No Comments »
I’ve made some changes to the the blog (again). When I first designed this site I had two Wordpress installs, one for the blog and one for my portfolio, both running different themes. When I initially did this I thought at the time that this was the best way to tackle the problem of being able to post easily whilst maintaining different layouts. After some thought I decided I was probably wrong and I’ve made a few changes.
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5th November 2008 / 1 Comment »
A few months back I was approached by Tom Mursell from NotGoingToUni about redesigning his job board and blog website aimed at teenagers who are leaving school and deciding on which route to take. The initial idea was to simple redesign of the current site and job board to improve the user experience and help raise the profile of his business.
A few phone calls and emails later Tom decided that the best way to push forward was to drop the job board and to concentrate on turning the site in to a resource specialising in information on alternative careers for school and college leavers. A few hours inside Photoshop and a couple of hundred lines of code later www.notgoingtouni.co.uk was born.
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