ABOUT me

It all began…

My earliest memory I have is when I started nursery, and was presented with colouring pencils and a piece of paper by my teacher...since then I have sketched, doodled, drawn, photographed, painted and sculpted my way through life, eventually finding myself where I am today.

As the years progressed, and during the peak of my new found excitement for creativity, I began to take notice of all the artistic creations around me that others had completed; from Saturday morning cartoons to world renowned masterpieces. It was through my admiration of these inspiring creations that around the age of 8, I decided to follow an artistic career, particularly animation.

I based my schoolwork as much as I could around art and design, illustrating my work rather than writing it (where appropriate!). In my spare time, I would create cartoon strips and practice observational drawing by sketching whatever caught my eye. When the time came to choose the subjects to study, all were based fundamentally around art.

During my school days, creativity evolved and combined with technology, giving a whole new medium for artists and designers to create with. With my everlasting pursuit of creativity and keen interest in new technology, the idea of media design and animation became very appealing, especially with revolutionary feature length animations appearing in cinemas and television.

Once the time had come to decide whether I wanted to continue education, or find work; I opted to go to university to study a course that was perfect for me in continuing my passion; Multimedia Technology. I studied at the University of Kent for three years, learning flash animation, digital design techniques, building html and front-end development. It was here that I created "Bodmas' Brain Buster", as my final year project. A flash maths edu-tainment program that was awarded a Europrix 2007 Quality Seal. After my three years of study (and some play in between!) I was awarded a first class degree with honours. It is one of my proudest achievements and got me my first step on the ladder of my career in web design and technology.

Work…

In my first role at Bell Systems Ltd I was part of a close knit design team within a marketing company for small businesses, I was able to use the skills I had learnt during my time at university working on a variety of projects including website design, email marketing for both in-house and clients as well as animation for plasma screen advertising. I feel this was the perfect position for a graduate in my industry as it gave me a taster of paths I could explore.

Joe is very creative and has great artistic flair

- Ian Rutter, Former employer

Affected by the recession, unfortunately the time came for me to move on. Although I had experienced working within email marketing already, it was not a major part of my job and the emails we sent were mainly information based newsletters. I felt I could explore this route further and began working for Creatormail and soon found there was a lot more to email marketing than I thought. As well as designing and building targeted emails for clients such as hmv.com and thetrainline.com, I have been lucky enough to build sister websites for companies such a Thomson and First Choice.

Outside of work…

I live in a little town called Northfleet (very close to Bluewater Shopping Centre) in Kent with my fiancée Pippa, we have been together since my first part time job in 2003 and have never been happier now that we have our own home together. I meet with all my old school friends and former works mates on a regular basis, where we catch up on our latest developments and reminisce on fond memories.

Although my role now mostly involves pixels and hexadecimal colours, I still paint with a good old fashioned brush, and still spend some weekends looking around the various art galleries of London for inspiration. I enjoy reading a good book during my commute, and I'm always a sucker for the latest and greatest release at the cinema.

If there's anything else you'd like to know, please do contact me (joe@joe-waghorn.co.uk). If you were after more about what I can do, take a look at my CV and my examples of work.