I've been away...

To say I’ve been away is a little white lie - for the last five years I’ve been gainfully employed at Arup, the global collective of designers and engineers. Having been self-employed for most of my career it was a fantastic experience to work closely with a team of visualisation experts delivering a wide variety of end products to support the design and engineering teams, enable valuable conversations to be had through public consultation and develop new and dynamic ways of presenting complex projects to a variety of audiences.

The experience enabled me to lead a team in delivering projects, developing templated workflows to ensure quality was met within tight deadlines and exposed me to major infrastructure projects in highways, rail, water, buildings and masterplanning.

I look forward now to bringing that new experience to bear on future projects, continuing the journey of delivering high quality media and interactives using Unreal Engine and a host of of other software.

Exciting :-)

ps. I will get round to updating my portfolio at some point - but for now get in touch and I can show you what I’ve been up to !

It costs nothing to join....or does it ?

Remember pyramid selling ? Is it still going on ? I'd imagine it is as its a simple chain of commission led transactions that seemingly benefits all but rewards those at the top the most.

Social media has added a Worldwide dimension to the same principal. Once one person shares or likes something the cascade of like minded individuals provides a window into their world that advertisers will pay good money to exploit.

And it doesn't cost the follower anything.

But I'd challenge that as it may not cost you your hard earned cash but it costs you time and attention and they're two of the most valuable things we have in our finite lives.

Once the bandwagon is rolling, and depending on how 'popular' the chosen subject is your time-lines and feeds will fill with their thoughts and feelings.

And if you're not careful your own thoughts and feelings will be swamped which leaves us with a few key influencers and a glut of drones.

As a designer, original thought is my greatest skill. Give me a problem and my joy is to identify and sideline all the great ideas that have gone before and stand, often with my eyes squinting, to one side, and look again...to see whether my unique perspective on life has a new solution.

But why bother ? Surely if there are solutions out there that work you might as well use them. Well you can, and sometimes they might indeed be the best way, but if no one ever questioned or dared to dream of a different or better way then we'd still be stuck in the dark ages.

Human beings are wonderful, amazing things when they're allowed to be. Every nuance or experience or influence we have taken on gives us a unique take on the world we live in. Celebrate that, harness that, look to bring your perspective and then break the mould, challenge, inspire, dare I say 'think different'.

And it doesn't have to be an Earth shattering new invention or discovery. It can be as simple as smiling at the person opposite you on your morning commute when all around are embedded within their technology and scowling.

And yes, I am fully aware this is a blog, designed to be read and liked and shared, but I'd rather just talk to you.

Loving your work

Since setting up JJCGI we've been thinking about that 'difficult second blog' for quite a while. Every draft written has come across as marketing speak, which, whilst potentially effective for the right audience just isn't what we're all about.

So whilst it may not be what our commercial manager wants to hear we cannot but help tell the simple truth...

We love what I do for a living !

We love researching a potential opportunity

We love making an approach and doing whatever we need to do to get in front of the decision maker

We love meeting that person and even more so their team to present JJCGI, our work and our ideas for what we can do for them

We love being given the opportunity to build on those ideas and put forward a considered proposal backed up by technical know how, realistic aspirations, realistic costs and appropriate timescales

We love being commissioned !

We love discovering all the information the client has already to inform the project, some of which they don't even know they have

We love starting to build the project, quick and dirty initially to elicit all the questioning we need to ask of them and to enable them to see the intent so they can question us

We love building a team to deliver the work

We love refining that early work, sculpting it towards the finished project

We love delivering the job, always on time, always on budget and always exceeding client expectation

We love continuing the client relationship, building on the trust gained in delivering that first project successfully

We love issuing my invoice because there are never any surprises

and of course...

We love getting paid so that we can do more of what.....

We love

New opportunities

Having been a partner at Persona-id, a partnership I founded 24 years ago alongside Stephen Roberts, I established James Jackson CGI in 2017 to pursue my own design, visualisation and animation projects.

I still collaborate with Steve, who now runs Persona-id as a sole trader, on projects we have developed together over the years. Indeed many of the projects in my portfolio were created during that time.

This site, and indeed this blog, is intended to enable me to work with an even wider range of clients in developing dynamic, high quality visualisation that can tell your story.

From time to time I'll be posting my thoughts on all things computer generated, possibly work/life balance juggling (busy home with a wife, three kids, dog, cat and some fish), perhaps even my personal love of squash (the sport not the vegetable).

But hopefully you'll like my work and we will get to speak and possibly even work together so I can use my skills to translate your ideas into tangible assets that can illustrate an editorial, explain a complex project, get planners to approve a design proposal or perhaps even sell your development off plan.

That's me that is