Elliot Jay Stocks

This page is in need of some heavy updating, so please bear with me

Hello! My name is Elliot Jay Stocks and I’m Senior Designer at Carsonified, a small but influential company located in Bath, England. My involvement with the web and passion for design tends to blur the boundaries between work and play, and I’m extremely grateful that I get paid to do stuff that I’d do for my own enjoyment.

As well as designing for both web and print, I write regularly for industry-leading publications such as .net, speak at conferences and events, and blog profusely here and at Carsonified.

My work is often featured in online and offline publications, showcased on ‘inspiration’ websites, and used as an example of how accessible web design can still look beautiful. Which is nice.

In my spare time I write and record music under the name Sourhaze and dream of getting back into drawing comic books.

A brief history, if you’re bored

Childhood

I was born on 2nd october 1981 and had a happy childhood in Kent; the most prominent memory being that it was filled with lots and lots of drawing. As well as my own stuff, I illustrated and designed various school pamphlets and posters throughout my school days at the request of the teachers, and eventually helped start a glossy, high production value school magazine. At 13 I received my first freelance job from the local council and illustrated a road safety booklet. Between age 13 and 17, I also self-published my own comic book. It looked like I was going to go into illustration as a career, until I discovered music and attempted to form a band...

Late teens

The ‘band’ ended up being a solo project, so armed with a guitar, keyboard, and drum machine, I started to write and record music on my lonesome. At around the same time, I discovered computer-aided design (very late in life, mind - I was terrified of computers until about 1998) and decided to design my own album covers. I took a year out between school and university and set up an independent record label with some local bands, which enabled me to handle the releases’ covers and POS material. It became apparent that we needed a website so I tried my hand at that, not knowing then the huge impact it would have on me.

In October 2001, I released my debut album ‘Bathed In Blue’.

University

I attended the University Of Westminster to study Contemporary Media Practice. Over the course of three years, I gradually leaned more and more towards web design (despite many of my early university projects focusing on film and screenwriting), and I spent the last year on a major Flash-based project and a dissertation that examined the nature of self-publishing on the internet. In May 2004, I graduated with a First Class (Hons) degree.

During sporadic recording sessions at university, I wrote and recorded the soundtrack to the independent film ‘The Ballad of Seven Sundays’.

The music industry

A month after graduation, I was lucky enough to land a job with EMI as ‘Junior Web Designer’ (most likely because of all the sites I’d built for friends’ bands as freelance work), and spent the next two years working on a variety of big-name projects, building up my portfolio with websites (as well as mailers, e-cards, and adverts) for artists such as Massive Attack, The Chemical Brothers, Dr. John, The Verve, and Joss Stone. After a year with EMI, I managed to get the ‘Junior’ dropped from my job title and started to get interested in whole Web Standards movement. I left in in August 2006 to join Sanctuary Records and focus on Standards-based design.

At around the same time, I released my second album, the aptly named ’Second Leaf’. Shortly after, I wrote and recorded the bulk of the soundtrack to the independent film ‘True To Form’.

2007: the year of change

In April 2007 I launched version 4 of elliotjaystocks.com and submitted it to several CSS gallery sites. The ensuing response was totally unexpected and utterly overwhelming: my unique visits shot from around 6 a day to 2500, and the site got featured on more and more galleries across the web. Smashing magazine featured it in its hugely popular list ‘60 Visually Appealing Designs’ and things just snowballed from there.

In June, I was contacted by Ryan Carson of Carson Systems and offered the job of Senior Designer at the company, which I accepted. Between the site’s release and the end of 2007, I’ve spoken at events, been interviewed for various publications, and become a contributor to .net magazine. Web design idols I’ve looked up to for years I can now count as friends, and if there’s one thing I can say, it’s that I’m very very happy. And my job with Carson Systems has even allowed me to get back into drawing again!