Freelance Design & Development
I specialise in User Experience Design, Web Development and Management of websites for both large and small organisations across New Zealand.
Online shops, marketing websites and publishing platforms predominantly built with Silverstripe or Shopify. With a focus on high performance including monitoring & maintenance.
With a design degree from Whanganui School of Design and over 20 years industry experience designing and coding for small and large design agencies, IT companies and startups. I have customers in Nelson, Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland and Tauranga. Most work is done remotely from my home office in the Port Hills, Christchurch New Zealand. I also fly to clients and work in-house when needed face to face. It's sometimes hard to beat a whiteboard and waving of hands.
The work I do varies from new design/builds to renovation projects, consultation and contracting. I use various platforms to build quality sites including SilverStripe, Shopify and SquareSpace. I also have a network of other skilled developers and designers and manage extra talented freelancers when needed.
I started my career as a 3D compositor and CD-rom producer in Melbourne, which soon morphed into web and graphic design in Wellington. I then naturally progressed into development and coding. Freelancing is great because I get to utilise my full range of skills and add immense value to a project.
I am comfortable both in web teams and solo projects. New builds and on-going maintenance. My skillset includes: Front End Development, Back End Development, User Experience Design, Responsive Design, Graphic Design, Server Configuration, SEO - Search Engine Optimisation, Team Management.
I am comfortable coding with PHP, HTML, CSS/SASS, Javascript, jQuery, Liquid(Shopify), Shell script.
Outside of the digital field my career has also included:
- Founding member of the band Eb & Sparrow, extensive gigging and touring; active between 2010-2018. Still gets air time on RadioNZ. Check out the band on Spotify.
- Author of 'Build Your Own Radio Controlled Yacht', published and distributed world wide 2007.
I live in Cashmere - Christchurch, New Zealand with Kate MacPherson and our daughter.
The pros and cons of some common website platforms:
SilverStripe
Great for custom design websites that need to perform well and look sharp. If you have the need for backend functionality like multiple editors with different permissions or a database of users; to managing large format images then SilverStripe is a great choice. The downside is the initial build cost may be higher. A server needs to be managed, although this is not that difficult and rarely needs intervention. All functionality is bespoke and will require some initial coding by a skilled developer using the open source tools available through New Zealand made: SilverStripe.org.
Shopify
Great for selling products online and tracking inventory / shipping. Shopify deals with all the transactional nuances, currency and money collection tasks well. Ability to customise templates and present your brand well and get a good SEO ranking. Managed hosting takes away the need to manage a server. Not so great for custom layouts if your site is content heavy or you want a truly bespoke brand experience. Highly recommended for an online shop. Check out a Shopify site I work on: lujoliving.com
SquareSpace
Great for a quick turnaround, cost effective initial build that looks fantastic and professional. Easy to maintain and update yourself or even build on your own if you had the time and patience. Has eCommerce functionality that is easy to setup and manage on their all in one managed hosting. Downsides are the limited customisation options and bloated code base that in some cases can hinder SEO optimisation. Checkout a SquareSpace site I built: blueplanetmarine.com
Wordpress
Great in-between option for a relatively quick turnaround for a bespoke custom design website. Great selection of plugins for backend functionality off the shelf saving some initial cost. Down sides are these plugins often behave erratically and cost money to fix and maintain. Wordpress also has a reputation for not being very secure from hackers. I personally don't recommend using Wordpress if you are serious about security and downtime must be 100%. These days this is all companies, not just the big players.
