A LITTLE ABOUT ME
Well as you know my name is Steven Gibbs and my passion lies with graphics. Ever since I was young I have had a big interest in drawing and used to sit at weekends drawing characters from my favourite cartoons. At Secondary School I studied Graphic Communication as I enjoyed doing technical drawings and creating graphics using software such as autosketch.
After secondary, I attended The Robert Gordon University in 2004 where I studied Computing for Graphics and Animation. Over those four years, I started getting interested in different software packages which I had never used before - predominately - Adobe packages.
Adobe Photoshop was the first that we were taught and instantly fell in love with. The module at University which revolved around Photoshop only briefly touched on it and gave us the basics but I knew I wanted to learn more as soon as we had finished that module. In my personal time I would look on various websites for Photoshop tutorials and go through them to develop new skills. Alot of tutorials I followed, involved changing cars which gave me good knowledge of tools and techniques such as the Pen Tool, changing colours of objects, making cutouts, Clone Tool and so on.
I now have an excellent knowledge of this software and can happily work away on it without any problems. Any problems that may come up, I can easily find information to find out how to perform a certain task and increase my knowledge further.
I self taught myself Macromedia Fireworks which is very similar to Photoshop but I never use it now since Macromedia were bought by Adobe.
The second package I developed an interest in was Adobe Flash. I loved working with it in the modules that required it at University and preferred coding actionscript for Flash rather than the other programming languages we learnt such as Java and C++. This was another package that again, I would go home and find tutorials on how to improve my skills. To this point in my life, I feel I have a good knowledge of the basics of Flash and actionscript and would be keen to find a role in employment where Flash was the key focus, if nothing in the Graphic Design sector was available.
After learning Photoshop and Flash I went on to teach myself Adobe Illustrator sice this was not touched on in my University course but always wanted to learn more about creating vectors and again I can quite happily work away in that package.
After graduating in July 2008 where I obtained a Batchelors of Science 2nd Class Honours 1st Division (2:1), I began looking for employment, where I landed my role as a Pre-Press Operative for Aberdeen Journals, creating adverts that appear in The Press and Jornal, The Evening Express, Scot-Ads and the Aberdeen Citizen and this is where I currently am.
The software primarily used is Adobe Indesign which I had never looked at before so in my time here so far, I have developed new skills and learnt another Adobe package. We also use Photoshop for any image editing such as removing backgrounds of logos, touch ups, changing RGB images to CMYK images for printing etc.
As much as I enjoy this role, I am keen to find something new to allow me to be more creative and get more variety in my work such as creating Brochures, posters, leaflets, business cards etc, rather than just focusing on adverts all the time.
I have also started getting some Freelance work and keen to find more, to allow me to build up a more substantial portfolio for future possible employers to looks at.
In my personal time I enjoy Basketball, watching movies and TV shows such as 24, listening to music and spending time with my fiance, Joanne who I have been with for over 3 years and got engaged to in June 2008.
If you would like to know more about me or have a job vacancy you would be interested in discussing with me, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Kind Regards
Steven Gibbs
Graphic Designer