Alex Stanhope

Design is in my blood. It’s always coursed through my veins, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. To date, I’ve accumulated over 18 years’ experience in digital marketing. In this time, the technologies behind the Web have continuously evolved and matured, and my interest has remained undiminished; if anything, it’s grown in tandem with the development of this game-changing phenomenon.

I’ll spare you the ignominy of having to sift through one of those rather ubiquitous “skill graphs” that you see about the place these days, but suffice it to say that I’ve worked across a number of disciplines including art direction, UX & UI design, front-end development, copywriting, branding design, email marketing, social media promotion and marketing planning.

Over the years, I’ve worked in teams or alone to take projects from concept to completion, and have been involved in most aspects of the creative digital process. Wireframing, concepting and final production have all been thrown into the mix, as has design for a plethora of platforms and media. Desktop. Mobile. Print. All part of a day’s work.

As someone with a long-standing love of technology, code has been a very big component of the journey too, and the mission has always been to learn and implement something new each and every time out of the blocks. This is a habit I picked up a long time ago. What started out as experiments with BASIC and machine code on computers with less than 48Kb RAM has blossomed into a full-blown love of all things front-end.

My output has been featured on most of the design showcases going, and then subsequently ripped off more times than I could count, code and all (some of the perpetrators have even had the gall to leave the original stats tracking in place, something which has always caused an eyebrow or two to be raised).

The creation of images has always been at the very core of what I do. It’s the result of an innate and overwhelming desire to make things look pretty. Photography has been an integral part of this for just about as long as I can remember.

Way before my earliest dabblings with the Web, I had fallen in love with the power of the photographic image and everything that went with it. Drawn like a moth to a flame by that tantalising, effervescent energy found only in the studio, and the meditative atmosphere of the darkroom, this has been a passionate affair that has lasted a lifetime.

At one stage, I was utterly convinced that my future lay as a fashion snapper, and while working in London, also took on a wide range of editorial and advertising commissions. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to meet and collaborate with some truly incredible individuals in the aerospace and defence, PR, local government, travel, motorsport, hospitality and beauty sectors to name but a few.

Over the years, I’ve always sought to put something back in to the industry that I love. This has taken several key guises: I’ve been the founder of a series of small (but always sold-out) digital conferences and meet-ups that have brought together some of the leading lights in the field, as well as break new talent on the speaking circuit. Then there have been invitations to help promote others, including the insanely wonderful Silicon Beach – sunny Bournemouth’s annual two-day advertising technology extravaganza.

I’ve also helped train the designers, developers and entrepreneurs of the future as a qualified Further and Higher Education lecturer. In short, all of the above have been nothing other than an immense privilege and the hugest of pleasures.

For kicks, I get a massive buzz out of travel (it really does broaden the mind you know), and come the winter months, you’ll more than likely find me up a mountain somewhere, attached to two planks of wood and trying to get down it as best I can. Music has always been a massive part of my life, as has cinema, art and literature, and my downtime usually involves immersing myself in as much of it all as humanly possible.

I’m currently based in the beautiful coastal city of Chichester, a particularly wonderful spot in southern England and one that isn’t a million miles away from London or Brighton or other key centres in the region. That said, location should never be a barrier to new opportunities, so travel won’t ever be an issue for the right projects.