2011: In Review

2011 has been an amazing year – professionally and personally. I always like to reflect on things I’ve ‘completed’, to see where I went wrong, and what I could do better, whether it’s a personal project or just a day at the office. Here are the highlights of my 2011.

Edinburgh in January

January

The beginning of this month was spent celebrating my anniversary in Edinburgh with Chris. Such a beautiful city and we can’t wait to go back on a day when the Zoo isn’t closed!

This month was the first New Adventures in Web Design – my first ‘big’ web conference and I was blown away. The speakers and talks were perfectly curated and I left the conference that day feeling incredibly inspired and excited about my craft. It was lovely to put some faces-to-Twitter-names at the after-party too and chat to some people that I really look up to.

Graffiti in Hoult's Yard

February

In June 2010 I started an internship at Rufus, which turned into a part-time job as a front-end developer, sometimes designer, while I studied my degree. I absolutely loved my time there, learnt so much about working in an agency / with clients and seriously improved my HTML/CSS/jQuery skills. We did a life brief at college with a mobile development agency, hedgehog lab, doing some iPhone UX/UI stuff for one of their products and they were seriously impressed with my work – and offered me a job as a UI designer. It was too good of an opportunity to miss, it was closer to home and gave me the chance to specialise in something I was passionate about.

I Heart You, in Ouseburn

March – April

These months were spent working maniacally on college, work and freelance projects. I don’t think I had time to breathe, but I loved it. The hedgehog lab website redesign went live, which I’m exceptionally proud of, especially with it being my first foray into making a website adaptive for different screen sizes. I designed and built a website for Sailor Girl Ltd, a boutique events management company, using Perch – such a fantastically lightweight CMS that ticked all of the boxes for those little client sites.

Built a little personal project using jQuery Masonry and some basic PHP, called Pullquotes, a place where I can collect all of my favourite excerpts from books, articles and poems.

Lucky Number 13

May

This was my final month as a student – all of my work was handed in on Friday the 13th. To mark the end of an era, me and Kat got celebratory ’13′ tattoos.  I still look at it every day and smile to myself.

I took a much-needed holiday to Tenerife with two of my best friends. Spent a week in the beautiful sunshine, completely switched off from the Internet and recharged my batteries, ready to jump into full-time agency life.

Buttermere in the Lake District

June

This month was DIBI, the two-track design and development conference, just over the water from me in Gateshead. I spent the day at the Design track and particularly enjoyed  the talks from Jeremy Keith, Jared Spool and Jeffrey Zeldman. Definitely a more practically-geared conference than New Adventures, but inspiring nonetheless.

Put together our Final Show for college – our small class managed to pull together a great exhibition of our work from the past two years and create a surprisingly dynamic display. Best part of it for me was for my parents to finally ‘get’ what I did for a living! I also found out I would be graduating with a Distinction – the highest classification you could get with my degree.

Went camping with Chris and friends in a beautiful corner of the Lake District, climbed a waterfall and realised the importance of disconnecting once in a while.

I turned 20.

Me and Kat on Graduation Day

July

The 11th was Graduation Day, admittedly, a lot less exciting than I’d envisaged. We were capped and gowned and sat for a few hours in a big hall while people clapped, and then handed blank rolls of paper. Regardless, it was a fantastic feeling to have closed a big chapter in my life.

I found out this month that I’d been shortlisted for the .net mag Young Designer of the Year award – I was completely shellshocked by this and amazingly humbled by all of the support and votes that were sent my way.

Spent a weekend in London with my partner in crime, Kat. Spent the whole time eating Hummingbird Bakery cupcakes, watching Harry Potter movies, dancing all night to drum and bass and falling in love with London.

Preparing to Activate, photo courtesy of Rob Such (http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertsuch/)

August

Me and Chris travelled down to Tunbridge Wells for the inaugural Activate, organised by Decode and Elliot Jay Stocks. Had a truly brilliant couple of days with some fellow web geeks – I blogged about it on the Codeworks Connection. 

My beautiful niece turned 1 this month. It’s been amazing watching how quickly she’s growing and developing and turning into a real little person.

Moved out of my first flat that had been my home for the past 2 years because my BFF Niamh was going back home to the South. It was quite sad, really – so memories had been created in that little flat, the ridiculous parties, countless conversations and the people that had came and went.

Went to Leeds Festival for the 3rd year in a row and had a pretty miserable time because of the weather – but got to see some of my favourite bands (read, My Chemical Romance)  and sit around the camp fire with some of my favourite people.

Gorges du Verdon, France

September

The first September that I wasn’t starting school or college. Scary.

Spent most of the month head down with work at hedgehog lab, but I was lucky enough for my parents to take me and Chris along with them to the South of France for a road trip. We visited Nice, Cannes, Avignon, Toulon, Aix-en-Provence, Monte Carlo and many little villages in between, ate a lot of good food, drank a lot of good wine and saw some absolutely beautiful places.

The Ducks at Ouseburn Farm

October

Found out I’d made the Top 3 for the Young Designer of the Year award. Freaked out a little. Again, found myself completely overwhelmed with the support and lovely words from friends and family. I’m incredibly lucky.

Do More Of What Makes You Happy.

November

Made my first foray into speaking, at our local design community event, Design Interest. I spoke about my User Interface Design Process. You can see my slides on SpeakerDeck. I was very nervous, but got some great feedback and it felt good to ‘give back’ to the community that has helped nurture my skills and career from the start.

Went to London for the .net mag awards party. I didn’t get the award, but I was so happy to see it go to Janna Hagan. I was only disappointed in myself that I didn’t have time to update my portfolio and I think I might have let myself down in that department, but, I’d got further than I could ever imagine and I had an incredible few days in London with my friends and family.

Christmas Gifts

December

An incredibly busy month, work-wise, as well as moonlighting on a few awesome freelance projects that have came my way. Went to a silly amount of Christmas parties, but loved catching up with friends who were usually too busy.

Had a lovely Christmas full of family, food and some lovely gifts being exchanged. Spending a few days at home with your parents is sometimes exactly what you need after a busy month.

And well, that brings us to now! This year has went by in a flash and I can’t believe how much I’ve done. I can’t wait for the year ahead – got a few personal projects on my mind, big plans to learn more, read more and have an even bigger year.