Having an instinctual understanding of how someone understands and interprets a site, a page, a piece of content or interface is at the heart of all the design work I do.

For me, getting to the root of the UX of a site and turning that into a successful design is the most interesting part of any piece of work. It’s something that every job I’ve had has had in common, including the work I’ve done in interactive TV. Backing that up with research and testing is also a fascinating part of the process.

User experience is an intrinsic part of the work any digital designer does, but it’s also an area of the job that I think is one of my greatest strengths.

My career in design career started with print. A huge part of that was designing and producing corporate, marketing and editorial materials which has given me a great deal of experience and knowledge about designing and producing for print. It’s an area of design that I’ve not had as many opportunities to work in recently which is a shame. I’d love to do more print work. That said, that knowledge an experience all informs the digital work I do today.

I’ve worked for a wide range of clients, though a lot of the work I’ve produced has been for large (and some smaller) fashion brands. Companies that tend to have very established, carefully crafted brands.

Understanding, translating and expressing these brands in interesting visual and functional ways is a huge part of all the projects I’ve worked on and constantly presents new challenges. It’s also what makes it fun!

I’ve also worked on a project creating, launching and building a new brand for a Chinese and International fashion brand, Catwalk 88. A huge project for me – and probably the work I’m most proud of.

More recently, working with cinema clients, translating a brand that tends to be somewhere between an afterthought and non-existent presents it’s own challenges. It also means trying to recreate the picture in a clients head is much more rewarding when you get it right.

You can’t design for web without a thorough understanding of all the underlying technical stuff. Part of working as a designer has included working as Flash (remember that?) developer, designing and building sites in ActionScript 2/3. Which has proven very useful in better learning and understanding CSS, JS and jQuery, all of which I’m pretty good with. I work on the front end of most of the sites I design just to try and insure that final layer of polish is there. Being able to work alongside development is one of the more important aspects of digital design, which more often than not isn’t given the time it deserves.

With more recent product work, this is more evident that ever before, where I’ve been working a lot more closely with front-end dev to help create a product that’s easy to maintain, update and adapt.

Beyond that, designing and defining a flexible library of components to be used as the framework for all future projects could not be done without the help, guidance and knowledge working with a good front-end team can give.