About me

Who am I?

I’m Curt, a Product Designer at Zen (Zen Educate & Zen Locum). When I’m not in front of a laptop, I’m probably out on the trails with my bike, chilling in the beer garden with an ale, or listening to some old school pirate radio sets.

I've been dabbling in digital design since 2013, but I only really got into UX/UI and front-end development around the start of 2017. In that time, I've worked on some really interesting projects, met a bunch of cool people, and interned at a couple of agencies before landing my first full-time role.

How did I start?

After studying multimedia design at college, I felt that pushing around logo ideas wasn’t for me. I was more interested in product design, and the whole idea of building things people would actually use.

With dreams of Portland and designing the next Air Max, I moved to Leicester and enrolled on a Product Design course at De Montfort.

Things started off well, but it wasn’t until the Tuesday morning hangovers and missed deadlines that I realised I hated what I was doing. After a few angry emails from the course leader, I eventually dropped out.

How did things turn around?

I realised that the best option was to try and enroll at my old college again, but I still had no idea what area of design I wanted to specialise in.

Knowing I wouldn’t figure things out laying in bed all day, I reached out to my old college tutor and asked if I could apply for his degree course in Multimedia. It was short notice, but thank f*ck he said yes…

I eventually enrolled onto the course, and it was here that I was reacquainted with my old dev tutor, Dwayne. His passion for learning and tough love approach to teaching is one of the main reasons I'm where I am today.

Dwayne was also the one to introduce me to the Head of UX at a local design agency, JH. That designer was Chris Bailey, and seeing his process and how his designs came to life; well — that was it really.

What happened next?

I won’t ramble on any longer, but as cliché as it might sound, I haven’t really looked back since being introduced to Chris Bailey.

Chris was my first mentor, and he taught me as much as he could about design and the web in such a short time. He even helped me land my first internship, and from that point on, things have been a pretty exciting blur.

Fast forward to now, and I’m working with tools and technologies I never imagined I would. I’ve helped ship a variety of digital products, and have worked alongside some truly talented people that make me a better, more determined person everyday.

I feel very fortunate to have landed on my feet, and absolutely love what I do. With that, I always try to give back to other designers whenever I can. If it wasn’t for people taking a chance on me, I genuinely have no clue what I’d be doing now.