I make things.
That is probably the simplest explanation, and it took me about fifteen years to arrive at it.
I started out making music and sound for films and animation. Then I started making the films. Then websites, identities, books, campaigns, reports, products and whatever else was needed to get an idea out of someone’s head and into the world. Somewhere along the way that became a career.
I have worked with musicians, one-woman businesses, banks, governments and global companies. Disney, David Lynch, The Cure, the Bank of England, HSBC, BlackRock, the FA. Also a bakery in North Tyneside and an ironing service in Newcastle, and I would not take either of those off this website. I once met Tim Minchin. That is not a project, it has been on this site for years, and it is not coming off now.
Sound designer, composer, film-maker, designer, developer, creative director, strategist, marketer, and a few things that never had a sensible job title.
The actual thread
It is not the medium. It is figuring things out.
I like complicated problems and blank sheets of paper. I like the projects where the answer does not exist yet and somebody has to go and find it. I tend to learn whatever I need to learn to make the thing work, which is how a composer ends up building websites and a designer ends up writing intelligence systems.
That is why the archive on this site looks slightly ridiculous. It is not fourteen specialisms. It is one person who kept taking on work he did not yet know how to do.
More recently that instinct has moved into strategy, technology and artificial intelligence, applied to systems rather than to individual pieces of work. Same job, larger object.
Off the clock
I write books, make records and build unnecessarily elaborate fictional worlds. I am from the North East and I live in London.
Things nobody asked me to make
These are not the best-looking things on the site. They are the ones that exist because I wanted them to exist, which is closer to the point.
Kumo ProjectAn animation studio, co-founded.
SaltAngelBlueA magazine, written, designed and published.
Neuron StarsA twelve-track album, and everything around it.
#CiceroCardboardA daft idea that turned into a real product.
KooCloA clothing company, built and then closed on purpose.
FUMANSTwo publishing titles, both mine. It has its own world at fumans.co.uk.