I was born and grew up in the southwest of Cornwall, and after graduating from art college in 1987 I spent 12-years living and working in London, first for a multidisciplinary design consultancy, then as the senior art editor for illustrated book publisher Conran Octopus.

In 1999 my wife Sarah and I decided that, whilst London is most definitely a nifty place to visit, we no longer wanted to live there, so we relocated to a six hundred year old village on the south coast with terrific broadband connections and a pub with wi-fi. After stints as design manager for The Ivy Press and Ilex Press in Lewes, and as art director for Brighton based visual arts publisher RotoVision, I now work as a freelance designer, art director and writer.

I’ve authored and co-authored multiple books, including Images: A Creative Digital Workflow for Graphic Designers; Graphic Design for Non-designers; Art Directing Projects for Print; Typography Referenced; Thou Shall Not Use Comic Sans: A Designer’s Almanac of Dos and Don’ts; and Draw Your Own Alphabets: Thirty Fonts to Scribble, Sketch, and Make Your Own. I’ve also acted as both project manager and designer on numerous titles, liaising directly with authors, photographers and other freelance suppliers on behalf of the publisher.

I live in East Sussex where my greyhounds are always on-hand to provide feedback when I can’t decide which typefaces to choose.