Michael Efford
This is me. I work on the web.
I was pretty much destined to end up here from the moment my parents gave me my first 286 computer. I got heavily into DOS games and computer graphics (raytracing!) and all that jazz. During Applied Computing at high school I connected to my first BBS and the internet not long after. In my first year at uni discovered IRC and the wonders of online communication. It contributed heavily to my academic demise thou and I left Computer Science due to too much maths and not enough interest on my part.
I started leaning more to my creative side as I left the Computer Science degree and ventured into the world of multimedia design. I ended up majoring in 3D animation, but won several web design awards and none for my 3D! It was then I realised how painstakingly hard and time consuming 3D was and decided to venture more into web design. I completed my honours year in 2001 in which I made a student community forum called the Students of Design Association (SODA). This got me heavily into CSS based layouts, and for anyone who remembers it, it was one of the first sites to allow people to switch (and more impressively create their own) styles to suit their preferences. SODA also got me heavily into trouble, which is the reason it's not around any more, but that's another story.
During my last 2 years at uni I started tutoring students in many areas of web design, and eventually went on to lecture in the field. At the time the uni was still teaching table based designs to students, but with my impetus the wonderful world of CSS based layouts slowly got assimilated into the curriculum.
Supplemented by my freelance business and contract Flash animation work at various agencies in Perth I survived for the next couple of years. I developed a broad range of skills but mostly focussed on graphic design and front end coding. I still hate Javascript to this day.
In 2004 I drove around Australia to get some perspective, then returned to work full time for Cube 7 and then Papercut Media where I was immersed in two very unfamiliar worlds. Macs and print design. Reluctant at first, but soon a zealot for both, I went about cursing the "spinning gay wheel" and losing lots of hair (see picture) over ink limits, bleeds, spot colours and dot gain.
In early 2006 I moved to Melbourne and continued to work for Papercut from afar. We set up VPNs and VOIP phones and it was just like being in an office that just happens to span the country. I still freelance for them on a regular basis as well as now working part-time for Oxfam Australia as their web designer.
I owe a lot of my career to the gentle prodding from my parents to follow a creative path. My dad was a lecturer in design for 30 yrs and cut his teeth working in the graphics department of the ABC (back when the backdrops behind the news reader were painstakingly hand drawn and typeset on cardboard then held up behind them!). My mum was a lecturer in Art History and English and continues to lecture me in both to this day ;)
I've also been inspired and pushed in many different directions by lots and lots of colleagues and friends. Graham Milton, Hamish Innes-Brown, Nat Brunovs, Patrick Pittman, Simon Wright and Priscilla Brice-Weller are the main ones to blame. Bastards.
So yeah, that's me. I'm Michael Efford and I work on the web.
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/strangejourney/1467854586/