I always wanted to be a designer, however being young and a wannabe rock n’ roll star I chose to pursue my love of music and gigged my way around the seedier clubs of London. By the time I realised that the pay for an unknown band was rubbish and barely covered the cost of a post gig kebab, it was too late to jump on a design course, so I did what any other rock and roll lovin 19 year old would do...and enrolled on a HND in Business Studies.
I didn’t leave my love of rock n’ roll behind though. The second proper job I had was making guitars at the Patrick Eggle Guitar factory in Coventry. I loved it...knocking chunks off a block of maple with a gouge and mallet...bloody brilliant. I’m still proud of the fact that as part of a small team, we made guitars for Brian May, Nik Kershaw, Black Sabbath, UB40, Oasis and that little bloke from Slade.
Eventually the company was bought out and relocated to Birmingham. I didn’t fancy the commute so set up a wedding stationery business with my girlfriend. After 3 years we decided the future was in selling stationery kits online and went about making an ecommerce site using cardboard, coat hangers and some sticky backed plastic (actually it was a bit of software called COWS). Despite the fact that it was rubbish, we actually got some orders so replaced COWS with something better a few months later.
On the back of that rip roaring success, we (me, my at the time girlfriend, sister of girlfriend and sister of girlfriends boyfriend) launched Find Me A Gift.com and that was where my real experience in ecommerce started.
I can’t remember what we built Findmeagift with (from now on called FMAG). There wasn’t anywhere near the choice of systems back then (2000) as there are now so we decided to spec our own system and have it built. I have to say that we did a bloody good job too. The FMAG ecommerce system was way ahead of its time – it had event reminders, emailable wishlists, a customer message system, interactive gift finder, order tracking, part shipping, auto responders...the lot.
Being a rather social bunny, I decided that I wanted to talk to people rather than email them so left FMAG in 2003, having gained a load of really valuable, real world ecommerce experience.
At that point I took a slight detour and joined the circus...more accurately I became a professional photographer. I joined Venture Portraits as a lowly junior photographer and quickly rose to Studio Director.
After a few years of that it was time to get a proper job and took a position at an insurance company (see, I told you it was a proper job).
Whilst it wasn’t glamourous, I learnt that selling an intangible product like insurance online is much trickier than selling a physical product. To get round this I completely re-wrote all the website content to make it friendlier, more engaging and took out as much of the legal mumbo jumbo as possible. By the end of my time there, I was Marketing Director and looked after 12 insurance brands doing much of the copywriting, designing and marketing myself – running affiliate schemes, doing search engine optimisation and haggling the price of adverts down.
In 2008 the company was sold to JLT for a princely sum. It didn’t make me rich but the bonus bought me a rather smashing bass guitar!
Around that time, we (me and person-who-used-to-be-girlfriend-but-was-now-wife) were expecting our first little one. So doing what all responsible late 30 year olds would do, I jacked in my proper job and decided to start WhiteRabbit Creative and go freelance as a designer. Smart move...oh yes, at least I could get out of bed late if we had a bad night and nobody got to see me looking haggard.
So here I am. WhiteRabbit Creative is the sum of all of my experience in ecommerce, design, copywriting and common sense (although that bit is a little debateable).
I approach design in a holistic way – I look at the business, the typical customer and what is unique to that business and aim to present the information or products in the most user friendly way possible. I’ll often make suggestions that I feel would improve the usability or conversion rate. I talk in an easy to understand way. I don’t use jargon or marketing gobbledegook – I leave that to the suited nonces. I’m very patient, I’m very good at interpreting design briefs and I always finish a project.
Job = done.
Some interesting and not-so-interesting bits about me:
Fave films: |
Star Wars The Matrix Unbreakable The Butterfly Effect A Knights Tale Indiana Jones & the Lost Ark |
Desert island discs: |
It Bites - The Tall Ships Judie Tzuke - Wonderland Kino - Picture Level 42 - The Pursuit of Accidents |
Hobbies: |
Snowboarding |
Celebrity lookalikee: |
Peter Duncan Will Young |
Best impression: |
Merlin from Sword in the Stone |
Loves: |
Cheesecake My kids My wife (in that order) |
Dislikes: |
Fog lights when it's not foggy Rap R&B Reality TV |