I have more than 19 years’ experience as a professional designer. Outside of work you can find me at the gym where I like to stay fit nursing a love/hate relationship with Leg Day. I am loyal and no stranger to hard work or long days, I go the extra mile to get things done.
Branding
Having worked both an in-house’ and designer for clientele, I have seen many approaches to branding over the years. To advocate, to understand branding –it is more than just design –it is to genuinely care about a product and someone’s business. I feel privileged to have worked closely with many directors –often early in the business development, and at times challenging marketing preconceptions –I believe a lot of designers miss out on this, crafting not just designs but brands.
Design
I am very well experienced with both print and digital pipelines; responsive web, iOS UX, and across the full spectrum of print design –complicated layouts, colour management and sourcing printers and chromalin proofs etc. Responsible for many projects at a time, my management skills have been honed and as a result I am a much more versatile designer ready to integrate and not shy of pressure.
I.T. Administration
As I.T. administrator for every company I have worked for over the past 14 years, domain names, FTP, DNS, hosting, security and mailboxes as a result are all the more familiar to me –not just because I work with them day to day in website design –but because I hands-on experience with the underlying tech.
”Hello World”
Since my first line of code (see title), I was hooked. Fluent in ASP, PHP and SQL, I am well versed in MVC frameworks such as Zend and OpenCart. I am currently teaching myself iOS development in Swift.
Marketing
Highly skilled in SEO and assessing and implementing online, mobile, e-commerce and social media marketing, I frequent SeoMOZ & many sources daily so my practise is in sync with the latest developments.
Gary Hicks
Email: gary@traceofwind.com Mobile: 07414 509157