I've been into art/design as a hobby for as long as I can remember. My first design job was in 1985 using traditional paste-up techniques and hand illustration - done work a couple of nice clients at that time, (Jaguar and Fine Fare - a national supermarket chain at the time), as well as 'cutting my teeth' on many smaller clients.

I was into computers from 1981 with my first Sinclair ZX81, writing incredibly simple programs in BASIC - but I've never really been a programmer... I can feel my way around with some real basic PHP but nothing complex.

I first started using computers for design around 1988 on a Commodore Amiga but again this was real basic stuff - Deluxe Paint and Wordsworth. I signed up for a 2 year course in CAD/CAM in 1990 thinking it was computer aided design rather than drafting/manufacture but I quit after 11 months as it was neither challenging or rewarding.

I used Harvard Graphics on an ancient PC in '91 to produce a few reactionary leaflets and a rather shoddy magazine.

First got into HTML with PaintShopPro, (like Koobi I thought it was better than Photoshop mainly because I couldn't afford Photoshop), in 1996 and knew that I'd ''arrived''.

Got my first copy of Photoshop in '97 along with my first Web based client and have been making a progressively decent living as a professional Web designer ever since

(sheesh don't I go on )