From lead type and paste-up...

Experience in some very traditional methods of print production has given an excellent platform to build understanding and insight into modern methods. Having an understanding of how type used to be handled, from lead type to phototypesetting to the advent of desktop publishing to the present day, and how those methods evolved, is a distinct advantage.

Prior to any exposure to print, my first employment was as a cartoonist for a long-gone trade magazine called 'Coachmart'. After drawing a six-frame cartoon strip on the Monday morning, I was left with four and a half days twiddling my thumbs. Darkroom work on a platform camera, developing, typesetting, paste-up and laborious Letraset application ensued. This was the doorway into the graphics industry.

Jobs in multi-language label layout and production, film planning, print-proofing and digital design methods followed, leading to an embracing of website design in the late 1990s.

And in my spare time...

As a counter to the travails of a computer screen, I've undertaken making jewellery from both silver and gold. This gives other parts of the brain a thorough work-out, and a hands-on and tangible method to fashioning items. Engineering in miniature.

My other passion is making music, having played bass guitar for many years, with a picture of 'Fear of Bicycles at the Adelphi Club shown here. I'm currently learning to play a five string double bass, pictured here along with a silver trowel with macassar ebony handle, forming a piece 36mm in total length and made from scratch. The 14ct twisted earrings are made from 'scrap' gold melted down and rolled out, hammered to texture, and twisted.