Blog ¶

Who are you and what do you do?
I'm Andy, I run a design and development studio called The Higgs Design Co. on St Paul's Square. We work predominantly in web, but do brand, print and graphic work too.

What was your route into this job?
I freelanced while I was at university and when I finished my degree, it was pretty obvious to me that although I was now qualified as an Industrial Designer, I was definitely more motivated to work with shiny fast-moving digital stuff than products. That was five years ago, I'm now 25, and I'm still doing it.

What companies/ organisations are doing really interesting things at the moment?
The folk at Rattle impress me time and again, and for this reason I love working with them when I get the chance.

Urban Coffee Co do online customer engagement really well (we only facilitate what they ask for), and they should be a model for any small business looking to embrace social media.

Buffer App is a fantastic little local startup for stacking up and regularly posting tweets, and much kudos to the guys running it. If you want to see how to setup and foster a web app properly, go checkout their stuff.

As for people I don't get paid to be nice about, I'm a big fan of what jkr say, what Apple make and what Virgin do.

Which tools of the trade could you not do without?
Black-inked pens. Some kind of camera. Probably a kettle.

What events might we catch you at?
Since 2006 I've been a regular at Multipack (and spin off event Geek In The Park when it happens).

In recent weeks Hydrahack, BrumWebBeers and Likemind. I enjoy Popcorn Comedy too. It really matters to me is there is a thriving set of web and digital communities in the city.

How do you keep up with what’s going on in your industry?
Coffee-fuelled discussions and bottomless news feeds at breakfast help. Twitter is useful too, but I struggle a bit to filter out the noise on there.

Are there any emerging trends that you think people should keep an eye on?
Probably too far off to be an emerging trend, but at some point in the not too distant future, search engines will be able to contextually comprehend every bit of data they ever had any access to, no matter what, when or where. I'm not sure we realise the importance of this yet. Every ounce of context will be crunched out of everything we've ever done online. Things will be amazing. We will all reminisce about how naïve we were, even though right now, many of us think we are living in the future.

Describe your office/ workspace decor in five words...
Tech-laced mid-century mix?

Where do you tend to look for new team members?
Dan (our developer) joined me as my first full-time employee in February, and we came across each other via Multipack. That said, I had some interesting and good applications via both Jobplot and Twitter. I get quite a lot of CVs emailed to me too.

From the perspective of a complete novice at hiring, I think recruitment can be very tricky, and perhaps I was a bit lucky. Friends of mine who are looking to fill roles in their own businesses seem to have found it difficult to locate fantastic people who want to work in smaller companies. The best thing is that there are some very talented people around Birmingham, and some of the more long-standing business owners around here have been kind enough to impart to me their own experiences. That really helped and I'm very grateful.

Do you have any recommended resources for people trying to get into your industry?
It's less of a resource, and more of a tip. So many folk who are trying to break into web and who have done digital degrees seem to lack basic, up-to-date knowledge, mainly due to the speed a curriculum evolves vs. the speed the web progresses. You can't just rely on what your tutors tell you.

If you're not drinking or meeting with real web folk towards the end of your period of study, your knowledge is going to be at least six months behind the rest of the industry. There's no excuse not to meet interesting web people in Birmingham; they congregate in pubs and coffee shops. I should know, I keep meeting them.

Generally, I think that the people who engage most seem to enjoy their work, remain more informed and produce more interesting stuff.