• 

• Hello.
  I’m a designer, writer, artist and musician. But, who am I really?

• 1973

  

• Nottingham born.

• 

• Chubby and quiet, good at drawing. It’s always sunny.

• 

• 1980sThere is
  football;¹
  there is pop and soft rock;

• 

• there are
  national
  parks;
  there is
  nature;²

• 

• there are
  birds.
  
  And then

• 

• there is teen age.
  
  I get this feeling I’m in motion, a sudden sense of liberty.³

• 1987

  

• The world opens up. Paintings from the 50s; new landscapes.⁴
  
  Down the way, the road’s divided. Paint me the places you’ve seen.⁵

• 

• 1990Identity.
  
  The past was yours, but the future’s mine.⁶

• 

• I’m me and nobody else; and whatever people think I am or say I am, that’s what I’m not.⁷

• 

• 1993The North.
  Art school.
  
  All these
  accidents
  That happen
  Follow the dot.⁸

• 

• Graduate.

• Gravitate.
  To London.
  
  And I’d like to just continue to be able to express myself.⁹

• 

• 1998To Reykjavík.
  It is raw.¹⁰
  
  art / land / music / life
  
  Briefly, heima.

• 

• Iceland has offered a new beginning. Ágætis byrjun¹¹

• 

• Home.

• 2000Buy a computer.¹²
  
  Seduced by the web as a creative space.
  
  Caught between art and online.

• 

• HTML / CSS / CMS / obsess.
  
  Build, play, experiment.¹³
  
  Transition
  Transmission¹⁴

• 

• 2002Opportunity;
  web designer.
  Finally, a
  real job.¹⁵
  
  Bearface.¹⁶

• 

• Right place,
  right time.
  
  Blog v1.
  Clients. Recognition.

• 

• 2006Published.¹⁷
  
  My own agency.¹⁸

• 

• A year in
  deep Frieze.¹⁹
  
  Employees.
  Stress.
  Bye, Dad.

• 

• Inquisitive.
  What relevance
  old ideas? Art?
  
  Travel. Speaking.
  Conferences.
  Blog v4.²⁰

• New Adventures.²¹

• 2011

  

• NYC. Through the underground, underneath the sky scrapes.²²
  
  Always anxious.²³
  Always adding weight.

• 

• It wasn’t like a rain
  it was more like a sea.²⁴
  
  Make the change;
  make less noise.

• 

• Open a space into which love can flow.
  
  Half of my life, I’ve been waking up.²⁵

• 2013

  

• Engaged.
  Forty.
  
  Our love is like the flowers. The rain, the sea and the hours.²⁶

• 2014

  

• Married.
  Life is shared.
  
  Newfoundland.
  We fall for cities.²⁷

• 

• Learn to run.
  Mental
  salvation.
  
  Half
  marathon.

• 

• I fill my
  mind with
  ecology
  philosophy
  and

• 

• oh
  so
  much

• 

• art + music + poetry.²⁸

• 2017Clarity and realignment.
  
  I’m writing again.

• 

• There is
  much work
  to be done.
  
  New Adventures
  returns.²⁹

• 2022

  

• A new outlet.
  Decades of
  ideas coalesce.
  
  Site Nonsite.
  Hiroshima EP.³⁰

• 

• That was the
  beginning.
  
  Hello.
  I’m Simon.

Footnotes

• ⊙Related article on this site
• ⇗External site
• ^Return to text

1. Football: Notts County. Music: my taste ranged from Queen to Kim Wilde. I was also a member of the Heart fanclub. ^
2. I loved the Peak District like other kids loved theme parks. No car, so we’d go by bus. I was an obsessive birder. ⊙ ^
3. New Order, “True Faith”. The album, Substance, changed my world. ^
4. Peter Lanyon and the St Ives artists, but also the abstract expressionists. ⊙ ^
5. R.E.M., “Maps and Legends”. ^
6. The Stone Roses, “She Bangs the Drums”. ⊙ ^
7. Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, set in my hometown. ⇗ ⊙ ^
8. Björk, “Joga”. ^
9. DJ Shadow, “Building Steam...”. ^
10. I first went to Iceland in 1998 as an artist in residence, returning frequently. ⊙ ^
11. Sigur Rós, Ágætis byrjun. ⊙ ^
12. A late starter, my first proper computer was an indigo iMac G3. ^
13. My first big project was You Are Here, a popular online network for local artists. ^
14. David Bowie, “TVC15”. I had a revelation about the web while bathing under The Weather Project, by Olafur Eliasson. ^
15. After years working in shops and bars, I joined Agenzia Ltd as a designer/dev. ^
16. He was being abused by a neighbour. He started visiting me and I adopted him. ^
17. Co-authored some books; wrote my own, Beginning CSS Web Development. ⇗ ⊙ ^
18. Erskine Design, LLP. ^
19. Single-handedly rebuilt and redesigned Frieze and Frieze Art Fair websites (much admired, and copied). ⊙ ^
20. I was fortunate to speak all over the world, mostly between 2009 and 2013. The fourth version of this site was a popular responsive design. ⊙ ^
21. New Adventures conference. ⇗ ^
22. Beastie Boys, “Root Down”. I was in NY a lot working on a digital music project, and later as a partner of Fictive Kin. ^
23. I struggled with generalised anxiety, ate a lot, and neglected to exercise. ^
24. The National, “Pink Rabbits”. ^
25. The Walkmen, “While I Shovel the Snow”. We were engaged in Lisbon. ^
26. New Order, “The Village”. ^
27. My wife’s family are from St. John’s. We also love Copenhagen, Tokyo, Stockholm, Montreal, Hiroshima... ^
28. Timothy Morton, Being Ecological ⇗; Frank Ocean, Blonde. ^
29. After a six year hiatus, we returned in 2019, and again in 2020. ⊙ ^
30. On May 6th, 2022, at age 48, I released music for the first time; an EP: my love letter to Hiroshima. ⊙ ^
31. I wrote about this timeline. ⊙
32. All albums and songs featured in a Spotify playlist. ⇗