Hi, from Anthony!

Hi there, my fellow web people. My name is Anthony Short, and I’m the junior web designer and developer here at Newism.

Yes, that means my daily duties can include brewing coffee and fetching the paper - but when I’m not doing that, I’m designing and developing for the web. Fortunately, I’m currently the only employee with the official title of “Web Designer / Developer”, so I still hold that over the higher-ups, and it makes me feel just a little bit special.

An emcee to a degree…

I’m currently finishing up my degree in Graphic Design (or Visual Communication if you’re being official) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. So I have a love of fine typography, grids and layouts. Design is great, but being creative can be hard work, so I compliment it with some logical web coding. I work with all sorts of code - HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and just about anything else that gets the job done.

I began working with Newism earlier this year during my industry placement. I had always thought Sydney was going to be the only place I would find really great web designers. Even though Newism’s old place-holder site wasn’t as glorious as this one you see today, I knew these guys knew their stuff. They were keen to develop their Bits & Pixels site and I was keen to find out how professionals worked. So now here I am as an employee of Newism, and I’m very happy indeed.

Websites good. Print bad.

I’ve always been more attracted to the web as a medium for design over any other, because of its dynamic content and large scale. What other medium can be seen by just about every person on Earth? There’s no finer feeling than watching a site go live and seeing people make use of it, commenting, signing up and interacting with it. You know you’ve done a good job with your design if it’s transparent – if people navigate around your site and aren’t restricted by the design but rather guided by it, they will have a much more enjoyable experience. Print design, for me, just doesn’t compare to the depth of thought and logic that goes into creating a great website.

It’s my life

During the short periods of time when I’m not staring at the screen on my MacBook, I’m usually wishing I had time to develop some other hobbies. I’ve got a guitar sitting in the corner I haven’t learnt to play for at least two years, and unfortunately my Guitar Hero skills don’t seem to carry over to the real thing. On occasion I blog over at my site, anthonyshort.com.au, but the site is well overdue for a make over which is coming in the next couple of months.

In closing…

I’m looking forward to writing some interesting, controversial and possibly entertaining posts here at the Newism blog, and especially getting involved in some interesting conversation. So with that in mind, feel free to add your comment and say hi!