On leaving school I studied Engineering and getting a distinction secured me an apprenticeship with Jaguar as an automotive technician. Three years later I was fully qualified passing my City & Guilds. However, it was while at Jaguar that I realised I was capable of much more as I spent most of my time eyeing up the cars and thinking about how amazing Jaguars could look if they were designed differently. When the X-Type was revealed, that was it, I knew I wanted to be a designer! Seeing a brand such as Jaguar making such monumental mistakes was something that inspired me to leave my job, Southampton and study design. It was at this point I realised I had a genuine thirst to make things better. I worked at Southampton dockyards working 84 hour weeks repairing freight trains to save up the money to put myself through university and as soon as I could I enrolled myself on the BA (Hons) Automotive Design course in Wales.

While studying I was opened up to the world of design but soon found I could utilise skills I had been taught in the past; to quickly problem solve, to do a job properly and to think outside the box. The course was about much more than cars, it was about design in general, the world, technological advancements, history, branding and most importantly, people. For me, making a difference for the better is something that fuels my ambition to learn as I think a designer should work in society for society in whichever discipline.

I chose to specialise in web design as there is massive scope for me to be creative. Developing new ideas and working on lots of exciting projects, I hand-code all my websites to W3C standards using valid XTHML and CSS. My degree has given me a good foundation on which to build and I'm looking forward to progressing as a front end developer.

Publications:

Heale, R & Head, Dr R (June 2007): “Five Questions", Crossing Boundaries 2007 Hochschule Für Gestaltung, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany. Paper: "Five Questions"; submitted and delivered at Cumulus 2007, an international design conference held at Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany – paper challenges origins of great design and great designers.

Skills:

HTML5 (currently learning), CSS3 (currently learning), Compass/SASS (currently learning), HTML, CSS, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, copywriting, Illustrator (basic), jQuery, SEO, Visual Studio, ASP.NET (basic), Excel, Powerpoint.