Sian
First up, Sian (or Siano), our awesome Studio Manager. We were on the look-out for someone to help us get super organised and help us to provide the level of service for our clients that we constantly aspire to.
Thankfully for us we found Sian amongst many, very strong applicants who came forward and she’s been incredibly focused on the task in hand ever since. Possessing both the cheery disposition and the firm hand needed to guide and support both the team and our clients she has proved an indispensable member of Toward from day one.
Sian joined us last summer and has been wrangling the team and our processes into submission since then. We are under no illusions that studio management is one very tough role, you have to juggle many, many tasks and wear a variety of hats to try to manage everybody’s expectations and ensure we always deliver. We like to experiment with the latest online tools and keep refining our processes and thankfully Sian is a dab hand with all of them.
A great writer, an archeology and history buff, Sian can bake a mean cupcake and, it turns out, is a total natural at writing and delivering a rap. We could not have predicted that! Say hi to Siano on Twitter.
Matt
When our last front-end developer, Hamish, moved onto pastures new we thought we would have a really hard time finding someone as smart, logical and passionate about web design and development as him. Thankfully our luck was in when we found Matt. We met up with Matt at the end of last summer and very quickly got the feeling he would be a great fit for the Toward team.
Matt joined us from a large .net development agency so has experience with big clients, but is relishing working with a smaller team. He’s got an amazing eye for detail, great taste for good design and a very strong understanding of accessibility and cutting edge techniques—things that are incredibly hard to come across.
Matt is a bit good at cooking, has a wicked sense of humour, an unhealthy interest in particle physics and can be trusted to say it exactly as it is. He is incredibly fussy about his tea and partial to a lunchtime stroll around the Bay (or ‘The Village’, as he likes to call it). Matt can be found here if you fancy saying Hi!
Pete
Lastly we would like to introduce the newest Toward team member, Pete. Our hiring process here is pretty straight forward—if we’re all a bit too busy for a long period of time then it’s probably time to bring in another team member.
We had a huge response to our job advert for our new designer. Over 70 people applied, but one chap stood out and Pete’s work spoke for itself. When we’re bringing in new designers it’s really important to look for skills that complement the rest of the team and introduce something new. With Pete this comes in the form of a passion for layout and typographic design alongside skills in branding and design for the web.
He’s only been with us a couple of months and has already knocked several projects out of the park!
You’ll often find Pete at local gigs and we’ve also come to learn that he has a bit of a shoe buying habit (based on the number of boxes that arrive at the studio) and that if we need a film review he’s the man to ask.
Pete loves a bit of screen printing and creating his own beautifully made typographic prints. He’s a great addition to our team and a lovely guy to boot. Say Hello over on Twitter.
