Steve Miller
God, I hate this bit. I’m not great with words. Give me Adobe Creative Suite, Figma or Webflow and you can’t stop me. Ask me to write my story and I’m all “dedicated”, “passionate”, “approachable”, “collaborative”, “pragmatic”. Which I am. But it always sounds a bit naff when you write it.
Okay. Here goes. I’ve been a designer for 20 years. I always knew what I wanted to be. And not being able to draw well was never a hindrance. I just experimented with other materials. And when I got my first Mac… Wow!
I’ve been lucky enough to have… No. Enough with the modesty. I’ve been damned good enough to have worked on some pretty impressive accounts. WorldPay. VISA. SAP. Cisco. Experian. (I could get into this name-dropping malarky.)
I’ve also worked with some incredible people and companies. From the boutique Q Marketing design agency, where I first cut my teeth, to being in-house at PPG, running the studio at Octopus, and founding my own agency in 2016.
I’m happy working on my own. Or with others. I draw strength from collaboration.
I should probably have niched into brand identities or websites. But I could never decide what I liked better. There’s nothing like the feeling of creating a brand from scratch. The strategy, the positioning, the wording, the killer visuals that bring it all together. But equally, I like the neuroscience and trickery of the UX focused, marketing automated website.
The entire design process fascinates me endlessly. What’s the design there to do? It’s not just pretty pictures. It has to work. Clean design. The grid. The perfect blend of beauty, purpose and function. I love making things look really good. I won’t even use low-res imagery or previews. My clients see the ‘finished’ result or nothing at all. Granted, there might be a few ‘finished results’ before the final result.
I guess I should end with something like “I’ll let my work speak for itself”. But that’s only the half of it. It kind of helps if you like the guy you want to hire :)
