On the
clock
Agencies, in-house and now a studio of my own. A career spanning 10 years so far and a massive variety of experiences.
The
career
agency → in-house → my own thing. hover a role to see the work from it.
- March 2023 – nownow
Hive Creative Media
Founder, Creative Lead
- —Every pixel on the Hive site, and the work in it, is mine
- —Retained design team for Kernel: 200+ assets across 13 formats
- —Running the whole business, from pitch to invoice
- Oct 2024 – Oct 2025
Go Ape
Senior Digital Designer
- —Owned all digital creative, from website design to video production
- —Picked up print and pre-press artwork where needed
- Jul 2022 – Sep 2024
ALDI
Experience Design Specialist
- —XD Chapter Lead, representing Experience Design to the business
- —High-fidelity concept visuals presented to the board
- —Navigation structure and prototypes for a new customer service centre
- —Created a new artefact for presenting concepts alongside capability tickets
- —Ran artefact reviews to keep the team's deliverables consistent
- Jan 2021 – Jun 2022
Digital Ethos
Senior Designer
- —Stepped in as interim creative lead during a management change
- —Mentored and trained the junior designers
- —Brought 2D animation and motion in as a new service line
- —Set up a briefing system so nobody started a job blind
- Oct 2020 – Dec 2020
Success Local
Designer / Developer
- —Learned PHP and ACF to build custom WordPress templates
- Feb 2017 – Sep 2020
Verto
Junior Graphic Designer → Graphic Designer
- —300+ projects for clients from start-ups to household names
graphic design & illustration degree · de montfort university · 2013–2016
Built a business without quitting the day job
- Years before
Always wanted my own company. Hive started as a side hustle, slowly picking up momentum.
- 2023
ALDI tells our department it's moving to Germany. 18 months to find something new. I register Hive as a business.
- 2024
Ridiculous hours doing both jobs. Redundancy comes round, but Hive isn't quite ready. I take a role at Go Ape and tell myself it's temporary.
- Nov 2025
Twelve months later, nearly to the day, I leave and go all in on Hive.
Market researchUX/UICustomer journeysWeb design
Feature mappingTestingProduct designDesign system
PrototypingProduct strategyBrand identityMarketing
Market researchDesign systemMarketing
Feature mappingTestingProduct design
Customer journeysUX/UIBrand identity
PrototypingProduct strategyWeb design
After my grandad passed, his golf clubs sat in the garage for years until I finally picked them up at 32. I was hooked from the first round.
That collided with my habit of building things. It started as a way to find and rank nearby courses. Then shot tracking. Then stats, handicaps, live multiplayer scorecards, a native app.
I think I finally understand why my grandad loved this game so much.
Project scope
- Scoped, specced, feature & dependency mapped by me
- Created the design system, screens and customer journeys
- Built with Claude, expanding the feature set in tandem
- Beta testing and a continuous feedback loop with family, friends and real beta testers
- Released dinkitgolf.com as the marketing site for the app
Other personal
projects
- Live - in useHivebaseLead prospecting, website auditing and micro CRM tool for the studio
- In progressHiveStudioClean interface for OBS multicam recording for podcasts & interviews.
How I
work
same loop for a logo or an app. products just get more discovery, specs and testing.
- 01
Discover
Work out the real problem, who it's for and what done looks like.
- 02
Concept
Explore directions properly. No first-idea-wins.
- 03
Present
Show the thinking, not just the pictures.
- 04
Refine
Feedback, changes, repeat. As many rounds as it needs.
- 05
Ship
Signed off, built, launched. Done to the standard the budget allows, no shortcuts.