Even though my mum encouraged all of her children to draw from a very young age, and meticulously kept every one of our drawings in a great big book, I'd find it difficult to pinpoint my first illustration but maybe one day I will. If the comic books and mini magazines I drew later in childhood are anything to go by, it'll probably be embarrassing.
In 1985 our parents got us an Apple II and it didn't take me long to make my first digital graphics. Mind you, at the time you didn't use a mouse to make shapes; you had to code them entirely in BASIC. Needless to say I wasn't the most popular nine year old.
The first logo I designed in a professional capacity was in 1993, and it was for a heavy metal band in France called Orange Bud. As this was before I took up designing on the computer (and the Apple II was a little out of date by then), I hand painted it in acrylic. I'm not sure they ever went anywhere but I doubt my logo had anything to do with it.
In 1994, I picked up a mouse and started using Illustrator and Photoshop at Uni. These were in their infancy at the time; I remember marvelling at the Photoshop 2.5 version upgrade where they had introduced layers. We still had to wait a year for editable type.
My major at Uni was graphic design, but in my last trimester I took a web design class for a laugh. Little did I know it would lead to the main focus in my professional career for nearly a decade. My first website out of school was also in 1996, and was for a hosting company near Los Angeles. The site itself has long been updated, but recently I found a printout of the design. I can say for certain, that was embarrassing.
Presently I live in Hebden Bridge, nestled in the Pennines between Manchester and Leeds, with my husband David and our young son. When I switch the computer off, you're likely to find me playing with the little one, cooking, knitting or hiking. When I walk I'll often take a camera and various field guides depending on the season; in the autumn I'm a keen (but thankfully non-adventurous) amateur mycologist... but throughout the year I take an interest in trees, flora, acid house, wildlife, and the protection of indigenous plants.
