I’m fairly sure nobody knows what they really want to do and a thirteen year old certainly doesn’t. At least I think I was thirteen. I’ll warn you now, this is a very convoluted story of how I finally realised what I may, perhaps want to do with the rest of my years on this fine planet.

I was fairly new on this ye tech scene. It was around 2005 I think and I’d just got my first iPod; the iPod Shuffle, you know, the one that looks like a stick of gum. Previous I’d had a Sony NETMD Mini-Disc player and what a pile of shit that was. The Sonic Stage software was shockingly bad and the worst part was once you’d put the music on you could not get it off. Terrible. The final straw was me wanting to listen to Podcasts. This was pre-iTunes podcast integration so I had you use that Lemon one to shove it on my iPod.

I decided — naively — that after listening to a few shows I wanted to create my own. With my pre-pubescent voice in hand I stumbled on over to Blogger with my MP3s (I’m not even going to mention the show names, they’re too embarrassing with one review starting “Listen lady…”). After a while it became apparent that Blogger wasn’t feeding my needs. I looked around and came across RapidWeaver. This thing did it all. It’s the Swiss-army knife of CMS and the themes were pretty cool.

As cool as these themes were, I wanted something custom. I didn’t have Photoshop then; not even an illegal copy so I was using The GIMP. It did a pretty swift job of allowing me to implant banners and stuffs into the themes. I needed to do more with the themes though and very soon I found myself divulging into the CSS and HTML of RapidWeaver’s whatnots. Of course this was all new ground to me. I had no idea what the difference between a . and a # was but it didn’t matter. It was fun and I felt like I was actually creating something even if I was just modifying others’ work.

That got me into a lot of trouble actually. It had gotten to the point where I was releasing free themes based on others’. Foolishly I decided to ’sell’ some of these themes; which I really didn’t have the right to do. By this time I was fourteen and to be honest still very immature and idiotic. RapidWeaver was and still is very community based which is probably the main reason it’s so successful. People instantly knew I’d manipulated existing themes and this was reinforced by my previous free releases. This didn’t turn out to be all bad though. Since another theme designer, the same age as me, also got off on the wrong foot we decided to team up and form Vortex Themes. Vortex was quite success and was registered as an LTD. Unfortunately due to school I had to sell my half to my partner.

I did some odd jobs here and there — mainly free work for friends and some boring stuff to finesse skills. A few years later, and a few Graphics lessons more and we’re here now. I couldn’t be more happier with my choice. I love graphics, both print and screen and my college course couldn’t get much better.

I don’t think even now I would call myself a ‘designer’. I’m a student.

TinyGrab had been something Chris had discussed with me previously. Everyone in our Twitter ‘clique’ used Grab Up and most were unhappy with the slow, unreliable service following their takeover. Chris felt he could do a better job with a clean control panel, and much more reliable service.

He contracted me to design the main template of the site, and James Padolosey to code the control panel and accounts system. Initially I thought of designing the TinyGrab site as a typical Mac application site; ‘yummy’ and giving you little information on a single page. I looked at XTorrent’s site for inspiration and came up with something that did not match the TinyGrab in the slightest.

Something much less ‘yum’ was needed for TinyGrab. A breakdown of the final site design is shown below.

Riley Kaminer of RWK Visual contacted me in want of a new site for his photographic company. I believe he had a clear image in his mind of what he wanted. He sent me his business card which included key elements that must’ve made their way onto the site.

His colour scheme was one of the elements required for coherence between print and web work.

Orange and black were colours he wanted.

I incorporated the orange & black colour scheme that he was after and it seemed to fit  the site perfectly. I’ve always thought that photography sites need a dark theme to show contrast in the images, and in this case I also think that to be true.

For the portfolio page I decided the small thumbnails would be best fitting, with a lightbox-esque script to showcase the full size images. I also wanted RWK Visual to have a way to display their best work. The featured work area of this seemed a perfect place, and it all slotted into place nicely.

Featured work and thumbnails

In general I think the site was a success. Riley seemed extremely pleased with the site and it matched all of his criteria fully. I just wish he’d hurry up and get it online

I’ve been contemplating updating the site design for a while now, and even came up with a design before this one. I liked the other design but I didn’t think it portrayed my personality very well at all. I wanted something that stood out with a mixture of bright colours and greys. What I came up with - I think - accomplishes that aim perfectly.

The site is still in beta per se, and I haven’t got around to implementing light box on the gallery, and there are still a load of broken links floating around the place. However I feel that it is ready enough and suits me and the sit much better. Hit the comments and let me know what you think.