About Me
I started out as an illustrator for hire, and before that I spent my teens painting custom cars and motorbikes. I sold my first logo design when I was fourteen, although I had no real aspirations to be a graphic designer back then. It was a job I didn’t really understand, but I knew I’d like to make a living using my skills.
In the early 1980s Roger Knight and I were both working on the Railway Path Project, mapping out what became the Three Castles Cycle Route from Cardiff city centre to Merthyr Tydfil. On the side, we started a magazine called What’s Happening!, though calling it a magazine is generous. It was closer to a fanzine. Roger could write but wasn’t a journalist, I did the illustrations, and neither of us really knew what we were doing. But it taught me that you can make something people want to read with enthusiasm, a deadline and not much else, and I’ve been publishing magazines ever since.
Good Life Publishing
In 2007 my wife Jennifer and I founded Good Life Publishing, starting with Vale Life, the magazine for our home county of the Vale of Glamorgan. It has since grown into a family of more than thirty regional and specialist titles, from Travel Life and Oxford Life to City Life Cardiff, Gower Life and Darts Life, read across the UK and in more than 160 countries. I’m the Publisher and Creative Director, which in practice means I care about how every page looks and feels.
Design and branding
Alongside the magazines I work with another designer, Richard, under Cog Creative, a design and branding studio in Rhoose. After five decades in publishing, design and advertising, I still get the same kick from a logo that works or a layout that sings.
Photography
I love photographing people, and I love the things most people walk straight past: distressed and flaking paint, rust, torn posters and interesting shapes. Graffiti, murals and street art float my boat, and so do the talented people who make them. Give me Mediterranean light and I’m happy. There is something about the light in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece that I never tire of.
Stories worth telling
Jennifer and I also help people publish their own books, from novels to life stories, through Good Life Publishing. We also ghostwrite books for people, especially elderly clients whose computer skills and writing dexterity are not what they were.
This site is new and it will grow. Over the coming months I’ll be adding more pictures, stories from the early days and the odd thought on where the creative world is heading.