As the Grime Digital collective go through the early stages of launching their new site (www.grimedigital.com), it’s gave me time to reflect on my own time working with the collective and personal development throughout the years.
I started working alongside Hij and Lemon back when the grimepedia was in development, or grimegenre as it was known back then. I was in my first year of uni, studying Electronic Product Design. It was during my time working on grimepedia and its next project, grimeforum, that I decided where my future lay. Enjoying the development process while making the pedia I decided to scrap my current degree and uni, instead changing to a Computing degree at a separate uni, where I would hopefully be able to learn more about web design and development.
When development started on grimeforum, I had just a small amount of know how with how to install web applications and html/css. I was still studying my degree in EPD back then and didn’t really have a main skill set. I remember on group project during that degree we were all asked to put forward our key skills, “Photoshop”, “3D Modelling”, “Animation” were some put forward by others, I put mine as HTML and CSS. To a response from a fellow group member of, “*chuckle*, my 12 year old cousin knows html and css”, well I saw this guy working in Tesco last week, OH HAI FAGGOT!
The installation of vBulletin and the theming of the software was where I would first be introduced to PHP. My new degree course would continue my use of PHP and get introduced to the Adobe Creative Suite and the Zend Framework (these are probably the only two things I will take from uni to use now and in the future).
As grimeforum developed we constantly looked for opportunities to expand the sites, grimedigital being the next project (grimedigital in its original mold was a digital download store, running on Magento). I explored a lot with Magento and this was the first site that I worked solely on, implementing my own design and developing on the standard Magento platform. The more we worked on sites the more my interest grew in web design and development. I then went on to do my first bits of client work as such, a few layouts for Elijah and Skilliam’s butterz blogs, some myspace layouts for DJ Magic and a few other bits of work in the grime scene.
During my later years at Uni my own input to the grime digital team and the grime scene in general tailed off, leaving Lemon dragging the apple cart along on his lonesome for much of the time. Grimedigital never really took off (you can take a horse to water and all that), but with Lemon’s guidance grimeforum continued to be the number one place for grime discussion. Hij’s return to the forum saw me have another bit of small involvement, most recently being the design and development of the grime awards 2012 site. During my time away from the site I had been busy finishing my degree and getting my first job in the design industry. My Junior Developer role at Rees Bradley Hepburn which I am soon to leave in order to take up a role as a Digital Designer at the West Brom. In recent months I have also found myself becoming a dad for the first time, as I’ve already posted about on here.
Back to the original point of this post anyway, grimedigital have launched their all new website, which can be found at www.grimedigital.com. It’s still in it’s infancy, but already has a mass of content (well done to all of those involved as there’s a ton up there already).
All that’s left to say from me is a big thanks to all the guy’s Ive worked alongside over the years on these sites, it’s been a pleasure and has had a massive impact on my life! (Hij, Lemon, Elijah, Wiz, Geo, Deset, Kristian and whole host of other people that I fail to remember). Now current times, you can still find me posting on grimeforum, working alongside Lemon at Digitise.Me and being and cant in general on Twitter.
