Hey there!
I’m Adam Cullen, newly appointed Front-end Developer at Orbital Design, joining the digital marketing team. After a warm welcome and chilled first day in my new role, I was asked to write a little blog about me, myself and I. I’m not great at talking about myself so you’ll have to bare with me…
Where to start? Well I’m 21 years old and after 3 long and quite difficult years, have recently finished my BA (hons) in Digital Media Design at Bournemouth University.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about Uni. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed it, however, it was a great avenue for me to learn a lot of lessons, and fast, and not just academic. I mean life lessons, the most important being that the words ‘give up’ no longer mean anything to me.
As much as I probably shouldn’t admit it, I am a massive geek and no doubt that will cause some banter around the studio! I love to code, whether I’m doing it at work or when I get home, you’ll normally find me hiding behind my mac. I wish I could say that you’d find me behind my drum kit but sadly due to space that’s a hobby that’s had to be shelved for a little while. If I’m not on my mac ‘giving myself square eyes’ as my mum used to say, I’m on my xbox, watching a Marvel film or spending time with my family, especially my gorgeous little niece, who, as you can see below, I’m attempting to turn into a geek already.
As far as work goes, my main skill set lies within Web development, in particular WordPress sites. I suffer from a fascination of anything code, I’ll never forget the day I first switched from design view in ‘Dreamweaver’ to code view and learnt how to build properly, I was fascinated. We’ll switch back to 12 year old lingo now for a quote of “No Way!!! How can I make that happen?” and that’s why I love coding, because I still get that excited, around 7-8 years on, when a technology or language evolves and you learn something new again.
I’ve built quite a few web sites since I started at University, either as an assignments or for a client. I think I’ve got good experience for my age. So far I’ve worked with clients such as Creative Dorset (Dorset County Council), Grapevine Telecom, Lemur Attractions Group and Red Balloon Productions.
One of my most ambitious projects is called Gluyu and is primarily to help people. Around 3 Years ago I was diagnosed with Coeliac Disease, I can say from first hand experience that it is not an easy thing to live with or to come to terms with and I want to help, with a one stop shop for all things Gluten Free. So far I have a website that lists local restaurants that cater for Gluten Free, however I want to build a community, I want to have recipes, forums and even things like social meet ups etc. There’s still so much more to come on this project.
With Orbital I want to continue to develop my skills in an industry that is always moving, adapting and changing. I want to build websites that are beautiful and rich not only in content but in usability as well. I was offered multiple jobs, but I chose Orbital because of the opportunities, I get to work on projects that interest me, I’m not just doing the same thing day in day and day out, and so far it seems like a great and fun place to work.
At University my almost ambitious projects is the iOS application I embarked on for my final graduation project, where I no previous experience using the technology.
To most people that may well seem like a stupid thing to do, but those who know me know that I love to learn new things and I work best under pressure, and was I under pressure.
I learnt a lot. The beauty of that project is that it incorporated so many different technologies that are transferrable from mobile to web, so not only am I now able to code in Swift, but I have experience with iBeacons and Geofencing too.
With additional learning I am now competent enough to embark on some other ambitious projects where clients may need mobile application development.
If you want to have a chat with me either tweet me @addzycullen, find me at a digital meetup or drop me an email
Adam Cullen
Web Developer