Here I am in front of the camera being photographed for the Prince’s Trust. I had been fortunate to win the confidence of the committee with my business plan and was awarded a loan and grant to start the business. My story was featured in their newspaper. What a brilliant charity for young businesses.

Most of my work at this time was illustration based. I completed countless pen and ink drawings and hand-drawn signs for the Edinburgh Woollen Mill (that’s what the fax machine was for, as the sketches and designs were sent back and forth).

There was very little photography available and it was very expensive to print full colour so I often illustrated my designs with pencil and ink drawings to create interesting sales materials. Illustrated calendars, tenders, and exhibitions.

Some of the most challenging were the architectural illustrations for building and construction companies.

I would create illustrations from architects, elevations and plans of what a building would look like when completed, then create the folders and information packs for the sales team. My favourites were the large sandstone Glasgow merchant buildings that were being turned into luxury homes.

The drawing board was slowly giving way to the Apple Mac as Design became digital. After winning a Tender from the Local Authority for their new Brand I knew I needed to expand and employ a Design Team.

By now it was the naughties and teens, my team had grown and we had a new name “Ocean” The digital world was upon us, changing everything and we had to keep evolving to keep up. Exciting times as the business now had every discipline in the services from Strategic Marketing, Communications, Brand Development, Website Development.

Together we built a very dynamic and successful Brand Design Company, working with Clients as diverse as BSkyB to the NHS and the Tourist Board, Local Authorities, Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise Agencies and very many SME's.

It’s funny; Design definitely has a fashion “trend” not only in the execution and creation but also in the product. For years it was fashionable for organisations to create a highly polished Annual Report, which was quickly replaced by the Corporate Magazine.

We specialised in creating these Magazines, and the team and I produced many, all under “Mission Impossible” deadlines. A favourite quote was “The impossible we do today, miracles we do tomorrow”. The most prestigious of these was winning the Digitalk Magazine for Sky Television. We wrote a lot of the content and conducted telephone interviews with Sky employees, organised photography all over the country creating exciting interesting articles. Then we designed, published and delivered it every month to Staff and Engineers’ homes all over the country.

We often received Communication Awards for our brochure and magazine work. This was testimony to the hard work, dedication and creativity of the entire team.

At the heart of everything I strived to do was quality draftsmanship, typography, colour and composition. Decades of working at smaller than millimetre perfect tolerances. Everything learned from the early years was now developed into refined technical skills. But creatively my work had to be original, innovative and progressive.

I loved branding projects, I often took the lead in these, I enjoyed the process of getting to know the organisation learning their values and personality and expressing these through the designs I created. If I could include an illustrative detail in the design I was in my element. All my years of experience in business, design and illustration were being brought together in one small but very important piece of visual communication.

It’s all Art…