DCTH

Highlight of the Week: Number 7: Rob MacKay

Every week we at DCTH are picking a #DCTH user at random to highlight. This is a easy way to give back to the community for being so supportive in DCTH and a way to bring more people together and learn who is behind the avatar.

Give everybody a brief summary of what you do:

I suppose I make websites and signs really.  I trained as a web designer back in 1998 then kind of left the industry but kept the HTML going, then moved back into Design via sign making a few years ago.  I spent my time between creative roles in IT tech support of all places…
So I work in digital and vinyl ☺
I suppose my specialties are in CSS and XHTML, and I love web standards.

What brought you to DCTH?

I think it was actually @chadengle that brought me to DCTH, which I suppose isn’t surprising.  Chad was one of my first twitter contacts, and we often liked to swap stories of pancakes and syrup on his commute into work, oh those crazy days…

What brought you to twitter?

It was Bittbox who brought me to twitter.  Jay posted 101 reasons to join twitter on his Bittbox.com blog and I think 90 of them were “because it is awesome” or something, anyway I was convinced.

How vital is connecting with others in this field?

To me it’s extremely important; I have made so many excellent contacts and amazing friends on twitter – and people who I will now have the chance to work with, like @mistygirlph and @divinefusion.  Twitter is my office chat, and that is probably the only thing I miss from the office environment, so twitter fills my social needs for being at home and working alone.  I love the opportunity to work with a virtual team, I do love working with people, and I love the idea of it being globally!

Why Design/Developing?

I just love creating.  I walked away from school with only one A grade exam (the rest were C and below) and that was in 3D Design.  I left IT because my creative juices were not being satisfied, and I just had to do something creative.  Actually within my job as an IT Technician I actually trained someone in a little HTML as part of my job.  Throughout my IT career I have been making websites anyway, so it was a natural progression.

Freelance or Full-time?

I’m Freelance – but it’s as full time as anything has been, although it’s great to be able to take days off when you need them, especially with a young family!

Where can you be found in the social media realm?

Well my twitter is twitter.com/svgrob and my websites, where you can leave wonderful comments, are www.alteredaspect.info and www.svgonline.co.uk .  You can also reach me on Skype at rob-mackay.  You can also find me combating spam on the CSS-Tricks.com forums.

Any recent projects you want to show-off?

Here is my flickr stream of some signage and vinyl graphics I have done: flickr.com/photos/svgrob
Here is also a tutorial I wrote on CSS Positioning:  alteredaspect.info/the-art-of-css-positioning
And my portfolio can be found here: alteredaspect.info

#dcth . designers . highlights . twitter