About Simon Willans - Willans.net

Hello there!

I'm a web designer who is currently working for Strawberry, a leading creative, multi-disciplined marketing and design agency in Hull.

I haven't always been lived in Hull. I was born in Middlesbrough and lived there until the age of eighteen. At that time, I moved to Scarborough to study Internet Computing at the University of Hull. Once I had graduated in 2009, I knew that moving back to Middlesbrough wouldn't have been the best choice.

Web History

My interest in the web began at a young age. I designed my first website back when I was just fifteen years old. It all started when I regularly went on a virtual chat room site with a couple of friends. I saw that others were creating websites dedicated to the site and I wanted a piece of the action. The more I experimented, the more I got addicted to designing and building websites. I was designing sites, writing HTML, CSS and creating mini content management systems when I was only sixteen. It's been really interesting seeing the web develop over these past 8 years.

Throughout my university days I did the odd freelance web design project. Looking back only a few years, my websites were so terrible back then. It wasn't until my second year of university that my professional web career began. I took part in a charity web code-a-thon, in which we built two websites within 8 hours. It was at this event that I met the guys at Save9. After telling them of my interest of getting in to web design, I was soon offered an interview and a temporary job over the summery. After the summer, I was kept on during my final year of university, and went back full-time once I graduated.

By April/May 2010 I made my first major career decision. I'd decided that I'd got all I could get out of working in Scarborough. It was not a place to advance a career in web design. Visit Scarborough and you'll understand why. I applied for web design jobs in various cities through recruitment agencies and felt that I was getting nowhere. I decided to enquire directly to agencies whose portfolios appealed to me. After a short while, I had two interviews in two days and was offered both jobs. One in Durham, and one in Hull. I opted for Hull because of family and friends being in closer proximity. Strawberry also appeared to have a much more relaxed professional working environment. Sitting in a shirt and tie really didn't have much appeal.

I have now been at Strawberry for over a year, and I don't regret taking the job for one second. The support you get at the company is great, and I have had nothing but continual chances to improve my skillset. I'm getting pretty awesome at this web business, if I do say so myself.

Career

Strawberry - Web Designer/Developer: May 2010 - Present
Digital Scarborough - Web Designer: Nov 2009 - Feb 2010
Save9 - Web Designer: May 2008 - May 2010

Skills

HTML
CSS
JavaScript (jQuery)
Photoshop
PHP
MySQL
WordPress
ExpressionEngine

Interests

I don't spend all of my time on the web. Ironically, I prefer the outdoors to being cooked up inside; great career choice eh? So when I'm not at work, at the cinema or sat in a pub enjoying a cheeky Strongbow, I'm usually outdoors somewhere. My favourite hobby is snowboarding. I fell in love with it back in 2009 when I went to Les Arcs, France. Activity holidays are the only kind of holidays that appeal to me. I get bored easily. I also play a lot of football. I don't think I could live without playing the beautiful game.