Me

If you haven’t got enough time to read the full life story, you might want to read the executive briefing.

The Awful Truth

Considering I’d been reading other peoples’ blogs for quite a while, it was strange perhaps that I never managed to get around to writing one of these earlier, but then again, I always seemed to have something better to do…

I’m Andy, Igby, Iggy, Ig or simply Higgs depending on who’s talking to me and how angry they are. I am a reasonably young designer with a BA in Industrial Design and Technology but despite this background, my work is mainly concentrated on web, print, photographic and other design disciplines.

I was born and raised in Stourbridge in the West Midlands (England), and spent my high school years at Old Swinford Hospital school, which despite the name, isn’t a hospital. I like to spend as much time as I can elsewhere. Not that I have anything against The ‘Bridge; I just have an insatiable wanderlust. Originally this site was going to let people follow what I got up to on my travels, but it's turned into something much, much worse.

I enthuse over clever design, art, my cameras, my iPod, my Macs, P38 car bodywork filler (oh that smell), the enjoyable parts of my work, seeing the world, sunshine, black olives and being on the water or up mountains.

The only sport I truly enjoy doing is swimming, but I do like watching the rugby.

Executive Briefing

• My name is Andy
• I live in Stourbridge
• I'm a designer, and I work for myself
• My degree was in Industrial Design & Technology
• I prefer rugby union to football, but I'm no good at either - I prefer to swim
• I will argue about politics and history
• I bloody love great design, art and clever advertising
• I listen to and enjoy a lot of different music, but Foo Fighters are a constant
• I can drive
• I love to visit foreign climbs
• I probably have an unhealthy interest in Apple products, but I'm no Microsoft hater
• I post my photos here, in the gallery…

Colophon

If you have the vaguest interest:

• The blog is built with web standards in mind, although you probably will find it a little less polished than my commercial work as it's just a bit of a playground – CSS & xHTML Strict otherwise
• If you are looking for an XML/RSS feed for this site, the address you need is:
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/JustBeyondTheBridge
• This is the forth version of the site. Version 1 was a bit more grey and a lot less useful for anyone who didn’t use the ‘right’ browser. Version 2 was a lot more forgiving, including all the things that should be present in a half-decent site. Version 3 was ported from an archaic ASP and Access setup into Textpattern, but never got the lick of paint it was entitled to. This version is finally on a domain of it's own, and is running on Expression Engine. Who knows which blogging platform will I migrate to next.
• The background images on the pages are from my various travels
• I have been blogging here since early April 2005.
• Just Beyond The Bridge refers to my travels, and the idea of moving around. It also refers to my home town, Stourbridge.
• The photo in the background is a photo I took on the Tibetan Plateau during a venture in late spring, 2007.
• The photo of me above was taken at around dawn on a sand dune in the desert near Pushkar, India (credit: Sam Kempe)
• The word colophon is a printing term.