I’m the Creative Director at Offroadcode and an experienced freelance front end developer specialising in designing and building responsive, mobile first websites.
I currently live and work in Huddersfield and work full time with my good friend Pete Duncanson at Offroadcode where I am primarily responsible for the front end of all our projects including design and development.
My freelance background includes experience working for a range of direct clients and agencies throughout the UK since 2006.
“welcomebrand” (one word and all lower case) was established at the end of 2006 and is my ever evolving personal site and when time allows, will also be my portfolio once again.
I’ve worked on a wide range of projects in the past but felt that my current portfolio of work was no longer an accurate reflection of my current skills and ability, it may be more enlightening for you to check out what I’m up to these days at Offroadcode or get some snapshots of my works in progress at Dribbble.
It’s also home to my blog which allows me to write articles aimed primarily at fellow web designers and creatives on a range of topics focused mainly on pragmatic web design and freelancing in a competitive market.
Previous background
I’ve got a BSc Business Economics degree and an MSc in Creative Technology and prior to my career in design, worked in corporate account management for 4 years at O2 managing £2m worth of key mobile phone accounts for their corporate clients.
Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with some great clients and agencies who’ve benefited from my pragmatic approach to getting sites designed and built and delivering results.
You’re welcome to download my CV and find out more about my background and experience – James Young CV (1017) (2mb PDF).
Published work
I’m lucky enough to be able to say my work has been published in Net Magazine (Download a hi-res PDF of the article (7mb) (114)), the most popular web design magazine in the UK as part of their monthly feature “website build off” in March 2009. In addition to writing a post on Design Problem Solving for Smashing Magazine
Various iterations of this site have also been featured on a number of popular design galleries and inspiration lists.
Some technical notes about the site
The site theme is built on the back of my custom WordPress Developer theme “Barebones which you can download here – Barebones - A WordPress developers theme (198) and use yourself if you wish. The site of course runs on WordPress with a couple of plugins to fill some functionality gaps.
I actively monitor stats and traffic to the website and I’ve built it accordingly. It uses HTML5 and CSS3 and the flexible layout is custom built using based on the fantastic “mobile first” approach of 320 & Up from Andy Clarke – all of which means you should in theory be able to read the site on your phone while in the loo if you’re that way inclined.
The background graphic in the top parts of the site is one edited from an illustration called “I was snake bait” by Jay Weaver which you can buy here.