Hello, I'm Evan Skuthorpe and this is The Brisbane Line.

I'm a web site designer by trade and keen amateur at almost everything else. I like design, music, games, photography, travelling and much more. I don't like zucchini (or courgette if you must), chalk or New Zealanders - ask why?.

When I was young I wanted to be a chef and then later a games designer or web designer. I had a passion for both and studied for both but ended up going down the web route as it was more accessible and easier to tinker with from home. I still enjoy 3D modelling and animation though.

My professional experience consists of over 6 years of commercial web design for Harrods, Charles Tyrwhitt and Flight Centre UK. I love to delve into the world of freelance web design when ever I get work or time. But as far as the full time stuff goes - I'm a Senior Web Designer currently with Flight Centre UK.

I completed 3 diplomas simultaneously in 2002 while studying in Brisbane. One of these was in Multimedia where I learned and developed my web and game - technical and creative skills. One of these was in Software Development where I learned to code the back-end mumbo jumbo and I discovered I didn't like it, though I did understand it. The third and by no means last diploma I studied was in Network Engineering, pretty well un-related to the other two but interesting none the less.

I've been using Photoshop as my main design tool since version 5.5. Dreamweaver has been my main coding tool since version 3 and I've been using Flash since version 4-ish.

I'd say I know my stuff when it comes to web design. I learned HTML 4 the proper hand coding way and made the move several years ago into standardised XHTML/CSS markup.

My approach to web design is from an 'accessible and usability' standing. I'm not big on the fluffy or flashy approach, but the solid and well built, well designed, usable, accessible and intuitive style of design. As far as I'm concerned - web design shouldn't limit, slow down or hinder. It should simply be. It should exist and flow and be attractive to admire and easy to use.

I'm big on design and not 'structure'. As a web user I've lost count of the amount of poorly 'designed' web sites that leave you cold when it comes to ease of use and navigation. Just because a site is badly structured, a user shouldn't be punished with error messages that force them backwards to start over. Afterall, do you want visitors or not?

Now we all know that in the world of web, things will break out of our control from time to time but when these breaks can be are in our control, there's no excuse to not smooth them out and make a users experience more pleasureable. Things should just flow!