I design.

I’m not an artist, or cake decorator, or precious snowflake. I’m not a superhero-ninja-rockstar with a portfolio of award-winning work. In fact, I’m not a portfolio designer at all.

I am a consultant. And that makes me very lucky.

In the past I have got to work with great photographers and design things like this; and with leading research centres on publications like this.

Now I work at Red Badger, which is a notoriously difficult task in itself, because it’s made up of a bunch of people who are all at the top of their game. And I get to work along side them.

I get to see the inside of interesting (I mean really interesting) companies like the Financial Times and delve my sticky little mitts into the heart of their newest, brightest projects.

I get to spend each day working with UXers like Austin Keeble and Joe Dollar-Smirnov, developers like Viktor Charypar and Jon Yardley, and talented project managers and product owners to fix problems and build products that people want to use.

I get to learn from the people around me, and collect skills that allow me to build myself websites like this (so excuse the poor mobile nav, I’m still learning).

I get to share my experiences with students at General Assembly, and talk about design+ethics at InVision, with smart people from the likes of the BBC and GDS.

But wait. No. You’re right.

There is no portfolio here.

I could show you a picture of this card component, or that navigation system, this live news feed – but without the conversation of why it was built this way, or how it was designed with React in mind, or how we managed this edge-case – well, it’s all rather clean and shiny.

And I want you to see the dirt under those manicured nails.