Welcome to Hire Simon Now, my personal website and vehicle for self-promotion and demonstrating my talents for web design. If you haven’t guessed, I’m Simon. This site is aimed at professional employers and prospective clients alike who are looking for a talented web designer capable of unique and creative designs. More importantly, I'm looking for you to give me a chance to design for you.

Why Hire Simon now?

I have been studying web design for about six years, as well as a variety of graphic design applications such as Photoshop, Fireworks and Illustrator. I currently hold the Adobe ACE certificate in Photoshop CS3. I offer an an interesting blend of html technical know-how to create strongly written, accessible and standards-compliant websites with a creative graphical touch which helps bring the websites alive. I have the combined skills and creativity, that means that the websites I make are interesting and engaging.

What’s more, I’m continually developing my skills and knowledge. I study web design as much as I can (when I'm not designing websites) and am constantly exposing myself to new technologies and best practices of web design. I am a passionate devotee of PHP, a language I am committed to mastering. I also have a keen interest in MySQL and Jquery, which I now incorporate in some way in all my new projects. These are both languages that again I seek to perfect to a high level.

Background

The reason I built Hire Simon Now was that I wanted it to act as a vehicle to express my talents and passions in ways that my main website www.aztecdreamer.com cannot. I wanted to present myself to potential clients and employers with a more personal touch, and give them some insight into my personality.

The last 10 years of my career to this present day have been spent not in web design but IT Support. I have worked for international corporations in industries ranging from Shipping to Banking to Law. Before that I sold wine, working for Oddbins.

Instead of studying web design at university, I followed one of my other loves, the countryside, undertaking a degree in Rural Resource Management. While I did not make it in this field I still retain a passionate affection for the countryside and nature.

So Why Web Design?

My first IT job saw me sitting next to the web developers of a Taiwanese shipping firm. I found the strange, almost spell-like qualities of the HTML code tantalizing. It required skill and understanding to be able to manipulate the code to create exciting pages on the computer screen the whole world could see. It offered complexity and depth far beyond anything I could hope to find in IT Support (at least as far as I was concerned). I decided that from that moment forward, designing for the web was the only thing I wanted to do. Six years on, nothing has changed.

Qualities

Passion, enthusiasm, commitment and determination. These are all words that sum up my overall attitude to web deign. I have a thirst for knowledge and an indomitable spirit to conquer the web languages that stand before me. I do not always find it easy to learn. In fact a lot of the time, I find it downright difficult. However, where I win is through perseverance. My job takes eight hours of my life daily, but I still get up at 7 am to study for 1-2 hours before going to my day job. I then usually do the same again in the evening, when I’m not working on a website for myself or my clients.

Subjects studying / studied

I don’t believe you ever really reach the end of learning a subject. I currently study PHP, and now recently OOP.

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