Simon is armed with nearly 30 years of experience, having founded a series of digital marketing agencies before settling into his Board position here at Ponderosa. Over the years, he’s worked with a slew of leading brands, including the likes of the BBC, Disney, Hisense and Sony.
As Digital Design Director, he’s responsible for the design and build of websites, apps and digital design services within Ponderosa. From teaching himself to program, to how he gets creatively inspired, Simon shares how he got here.
When did you first know you wanted a role in the creative industries?
Growing up, I was captivated by the culture, branding and creative styles of my favourite hobbies – skateboarding, BMX and video games. I taught myself to program home computers, by the age of eleven, I was creating simple games. As soon as I started to create graphics and bring them to life on screen, I became hooked. That’s what made me realise my dream was to pursue a career in website design.
What’s your favourite part of your job?
I enjoy the ideation process and getting my brain thinking. I like being able to take inspiration from a diverse range of disciplines, collaborating with our Creative team as much as possible, and forming a fresh solution for a brief.
Is there a piece of work you’re most proud of?
I’m immensely proud of the work we did for the Audio-Technica e-commerce website. It involved a lot of design research, and collaboration with the client teams in the US and UK. With it being an international roll-out, it was very exciting to see it all come to life. You can see our case study for this web development work here.
What’s your approach to starting a new project?
I’m a big advocate of user-centred digital design, so I try and find as much insight into users and how they use a digital product as possible. Researching their habits and their environments really helps me to uncover opportunities to improve user experience. Starting with this insight helps me understand where the end result needs to be, and I work backwards from there.
How do you get your creative inspiration?
Ironically for a Digital Designer, I really love print! Whether it’s books, magazines (retro or futuristic), album covers or architecture material – I love going ‘old school’ and pulling a range of collateral to inspire me.
What do you see as the biggest challenge in the world of website design?
The website services industry has changed so much since I started out. Back then, rules hadn’t been established, so everyone was finding their way – a pretty mad and exciting time. This meant a lot of very creative, cutting-edge websites were produced (some with some very questionable usability!).
Fast-forward 30 years, and things have matured. We are very much driven by conversion rates, usability and more; we have so much data about every aspect of how a website performs, which is excellent.
AI is also a challenge but is also really exciting, it is the biggest issue facing our industry and those who understand and harness it will end up winning.
The challenge in my eyes is how we keep innovating, and within that, how we can bring back some of that original creative approach.
What advice would you give to someone looking to work in your industry?
I loved finding things I was passionate about and building side projects around them. I once built a web version of the 80s video game ‘Galaga’, just so I could experiment with sound effects and animating the alien attack formations. So, my advice to someone looking to work in digital design is to always have a passion project on-the-go. Expand your knowledge, play with what you know, and use it to push your skillset and experience in work.
