Designer first, developer by choice.

I started as a graphic designer in 2013 and switched to development so I could build what I was designing. That order still shows. I can take a project from brand and layout through to database schema and deployment without handing it over.

My first developer role was three and a half years at Idealweb, on the recruitment platform written up in the work section. It’s where I learned to build software. I wrote integrations against systems I didn’t control and a data model that had to keep one person’s identity straight across many companies, and every decision had non-technical users on the other end of it.

For the last six years I’ve run Digital Stream, the agency I co-founded in Centurion, as director and the developer on every project. That covers Laravel applications, WordPress builds and, more recently, Next.js and headless work, all hosted on infrastructure I administer myself. The design half never went away either. On most of those sites I did the logo, the layout and the brand work before I built anything, in Elementor, Divi or Avada where a builder fitted and a custom theme where one got in the way.

That’s why I’m after a hands-on role now. I’d rather spend the day building and designing than running an agency. I’m happy with a developer role or a developer and designer one, and the second is just the job I’ve been doing anyway.