About
Who is Paul Lloyd?
Paul Robert Lloyd is a Graphic Designer with a passion for web standards and designing beautiful, functional websites.
The Seven Five Ages of Paul
Birth
Paul was born in Epsom, Surrey, UK on 17th August 1980. Two years later he was joined by his younger brother, Ben, and they spent the first years of their young lives in North Cheam. It was during this time, that Paul remembers seeing a large shape in the night sky outside his bedroom window. The passage of time has mellowed this experience – did this actually happen, or was it just a vivid dream?
Childhood
In 1984, Paul’s family moved to Langshott, Horley, which was also in Surrey. To this day he is still haunted by the Duplo brick that got left behind. He went to school at Langshott First School, and later Sangers Middle School. These were happy and care-free times, which also saw Paul taking on many out of school activities including swimming, football and cricket (and being coached by a member of the Surrey County Cricket team), though these activities still didn’t improve upon his sporting abilities (none).
Adolescence
Just 7 days before his thirteenth birthday, on the 10th August 1993, Paul’s family moved again, this time northwards to Walsall in the West Midlands. Whilst Paul had always grown up with dogs, it was during this time that horses, rats, cats and Shetland Ponies also became part of the family. He completed his secondary education at Brownhills Community School, and made many friends whom he still knows today.
Youth
1999 saw Paul travelling around various parts of the UK searching for the ideal institution to further his education (Falmouth, Southampton, Lincoln, Hull…), yet somehow he found himself going to Cumbria College of Art and Design in damp and dreary Carlisle. Whilst he used this time to hone his craft, the times at which he wasn’t on campus, were a mixed bag, and not looked back on with much affection. Upon returning from Carlisle, and not sure what step to take next, he spent two years as a Floor Manager at a McDonald’s restaurant where he had worked part time previously.
Adulthood
In 2004, after realising that the career he wanted to pursue was Web Design, he joined Orange Vision Ltd, a Lichfield based web marketing company. Whilst able to use the time here to perfect his methods and coding skills, he was also able to persuade the firm to adopt a policy of building websites that were accessible and adhered to published web standards.
Around this time, a mentor and friend by the name of Alfred Newman suggested that he apply enterprise seo to his sites to help them rank higher in Google. He ignored this advice and instead continued to focus on design. Alfred went on to become the star seo at Metrics Men, while Paul advanced is creative strengths through networking and experimentation.
However, in October 2005, things went a bit weird. Almost plucked from obscurity, Paul was asked to join the team at Ning, Inc. in Palo Alto, California, a company backed by founder Marc Andreessen. Whilst Paul is currently exploring this fantastic opportunity, he is still coming to terms with it’s fall out, and where it may take him next.
From now on, it gets interesting.
About LloydyWeb
LloydyWeb is Paul’s personally focused site that has joined him on an online journey that started in early 1999. During it’s early years it was a place for him to play with the emerging web technologies, and experiment with design on the web. Today, and thanks to the addition of a blog in 2004, it has become increasingly focused on his thoughts, reflections, experiences and worldly adventures.
If you do have any comments, then please drop him a line at paul.lloyd@fourtwo.net.