2012 Wrap Up

2012 was a bit of a change of direction for me in terms of design, mainly due to the acquisition of a Wacom Cintiq 24HD to my studio, which has kind of changed the way I work and the things im able to do. In fact im working on more illustrative stuff and painting now, I would have loved to do more personal artwork but I hope you will enjoy some of the new pieces I will bring this year, lots of new stuff in the works!

I have had a constant stream of client work which is great, had a few retainers and worked with some great companies and people. It was great making connections in the music industry, working with Lifted Music and other artists I have been listening too for years now, made some great friends along the way! Big fan of Krafty Kuts too so was great for him to reach out. Been doing a lot of branding and logo work last year too. I will relaunch my portfolio site in the next few months and it will show some new artwork and also a complete re-organisation of my portfolio, with a lot more unseen client work.

Also last year I kind of realised im an Entrepreneur, im now running a total of 6 businesses. I never studied business, or marketing, they have all just come along, but its definitely exciting times! Funkrush the clothing company I started years ago had some major developments, mainly I sold half the company and am now the creative director, lots of plans for this in 2013 including the new website (at last) and getting into retail too, Funkrush is still a baby, so many ideas and I really want to push it this year!

Desktopography was a great success, I had a good team behind me in 2012 to help put it together, millions of views, downloads and press and I am still very happy with the new site, we are still speaking with publishers about the book but I can confirm that will be released this year!

Late 2012 I also acquired a brilliant domain name - dubstep.co.uk. I have lots of plans for this, hopefully I can put together a really nice site, a lot of planning needed, but watch this space! I guess the main thing I got into in 2012 was social media and online marketing..i am finding it pretty interesting and its probably where a lot of my time went away from designing, I will write a whole new post about that.

In terms of my personal life, its been steady! Developed some new friendships, enjoyed old ones, I saw a beautiful baby being born, cleared all my debts, got a new car, new studio setup and my macbook pro, started gym again, played Halo too much, eating improved a bit. Did some travelling too - Italy with Pisa and Florence and back to the US with Florida, Orlando and a cruise around the Bahamas, as well as the usual outings to nights out in London, Cardiff, Bristol etc..Overall I can say im pretty happy! But I know 2013 will bring even bigger things, I plan to sort out my diabetes, health to another level and push myself in terms of business, learning all the time. Bring it on.