Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

Graphic design is something that I thoroughly enjoy dabbling in. I’ve loved it for a long time – right back to when I was about fifteen. Although saying that, when I first started, calling it “graphic design” would not do. The first images seemed to consist of dragging a few pictures together, slapping a bit of text on and calling it finished.

That first program was old, and pretty rubbish. When I got my hands on a copy of Photoshop, I found that using it was so much fun that I practised, and fiddled, and messed around nearly every day. After a while I was producing things that were actually pretty good. And over the years, I’ve continued to work with the program – even if it is just messing around, or producing background images for my desktop, or profile pictures for my friends. But it has paid off. Because now, rather suddenly, I’ve got a chance to really call myself a graphic designer.

Now I could potentially be producing a magazine for my friends business – a business that seems to be going quite well. He’s set up an office, it’s starting to get rolling quite nicely, and it’s really quite exciting. I’ve been to check out the office, and had a play on the computers, and it’s pretty cool stuff. With leased line providers, there is nice, fast internet available already, and it all feels so professional. I told him as much.

Business SDSL availability can sometimes be more lacking than you might like, apparently, which makes it quite difficult sorting it all out. So it wasn’t as simple as just rolling into the office and ordering any old internet. He had to research into all the available broadband companies to make sure that he didn’t get ripped off, and was ordering a package that could actually be of use to us if this thing snowballed – which hopefully it will.