Fordoing » Websites

I’m going freelance!

Harry Ford — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:58:05 +0000

After three happy years working as a graphic illustrator & designer at Fubra, I have decided to have a change of direction. It is something I have always wanted to do so I thought I would take the risk and go freelance.

I am currently working on completing my freelance site NeedStyle which has gone down well so far with the community on Forrst. I am also working on a theme site called NeedThemes alongside Sevenoaks based company Decode, where authors will be able to sell their own WordPress, Tumblr and vBulletin themes.

I would just like to say a huge thank you to everyone at Fubra who have enabled me to go freelance. I have never worked for a company and enjoyed my work so much. I have made so many lifelong friends at Fubra who I now surf and socialise with. You don’t get that in many companies.

I’d like to start off my new career in Freelance design with a quote from a favourite artist of mine – ‘Vincent van Gogh’

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”

Freelance Illustrators and their sites

Harry Ford — Sun, 16 May 2010 16:19:34 +0000

As I was mainly trained in illustration in my college and university years following other illustrators through their websites and Twitter has become quite the habit. I thought it was due time to show off a collection of some of the best illustrators and their freelance sites on fordoing.

Matt Hamm – @mrmatthamm

Matt Hamm is a professional web designer, web developer, illustrator. He is the Creative Director & co-founder of a small web design studio called Supereight Studio based in Guildford, Surrey alongside Pete Orme.

Joe Sciglitano – @joe_sciglitano

Joe “Shiggy” Sciglitano is an Australian based illustrator and designer doing children’s books and stuff. He’s recently added graphic design to the list of awesome things he does.

Kev Adamson – @kevadamson

Kev Adamson is an award winning freelance illustrator, web designer, graphic designer and animator. He has been working in the industry for about 7 years. During this time he has built up a massive reputation for producing original and professional work.

Howard Lyon – @howardlyon

For the past 13 years Howard Lyon has worked in the video game industry as an Art Director and as a concept artist and freelance illustrator for clients such as Wizards of the Coast, Blizzard Entertainment and Electronic Arts.

Emma Anderton – @Andhertoonz

Emma Anderton lives and works in the North-West of England and has been a professional freelance illustrator since graduating in 2005.

Rod Hunt – @rodhuntdraws

Rod Hunt is a London based Illustrator & artist who has built a reputation for retro tinged Illustrations & detailed character filled landscapes for UK & international clients spanning publishing, design, advertising & new media, for everything from book covers to advertising campaigns, theme park maps & even the odd large scale installation too!

Matt Dixon

Matt Dixon is a freelance illustrator and concept artist from the UK. He has a long association with the games industry working on games including Harry Potter, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and Pirates of the Caribbean. He now works as a freelance providing illustration and concept design for print and digital media.

Christian Ward

Christian J. Ward was born 30 years ago and has been pretty much drawing ever since. Christian is currently found in London, often sports a beard and is currently favoring sharp pencils, Promarker markers and Photoshop CS.

A blog a day keeps the gremlins away

Harry Ford — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:44:38 +0000

My last few days at work of 2009 I saw a few different ideas for year long blogs. One idea I put to my friend Steve was Project52 a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. I didn’t think too much more about the idea and actually thought that maybe it would be too much in one year.

Then a day before we left to go on a New Year trip to North Wales Steve put his new idea to me, yearblog.co.uk. Steve had created this site with the aim to post 1 blog everyday for a whole year. So that would be 365 blogs in one year! For some reason being the mugg that I am, I wanted in right away.

Luckily enough Steve new the solution for allowing multiple blogs on the same domain (using either sub-domains or sub-directories), in the form of WordPress MU. He therefore created harryford.yearblog.co.uk for me. We both officially started our blogs New Year and have now been writing them for 5 days.

If you would like to get involved and create your own Year Blog please contact Steve at YearBlog.co.uk and make sure you follow his blog aswell.

Another year long blog idea I have seen grow quite popular is the 365 day design blog. Where designers create a unique piece of design every day for a year.

A few example blogs:

http://www.jarvisaddison.com/

http://365daydesignchallenge.blogspot.com/

http://kandicepoirier.tumblr.com/