About
Hi, I'm Jonathan Brain, though most people call me Jon or simply "J". I'm a web designer and developer living in Brighton, UK, and this site is where I can demonstrate what I do.
Primarily I'm a web developer. I come from the IT sphere having been teenage witness to advent of home computing in the 1980s, and that's where the majority of my expertise lies. That said, the web is such a visual medium that I believe development skills cannot stand alone, and that an understanding of, and capability in, design is an important quality in any web professional.
Design has been a part of me since an early age, though without any formal training until recently. It's a progression, though, and on every project where I get to flex these muscles they get stronger.
In 2000 I discovered photography - one of my passions. I still can't find enough time to take pictures, even if the results resolutely refuse to be as good as I want them to be. You can rate them for yourself here.
I'm a keen traveller - or should I say backpacker? Setting off to an unknown destination armed with only a sense of curiosity backed-up by a Lonely Planet guidebook is a wonderful luxury. Package tours and flash resorts don't cut the mustard - give me people, culture, public transport and my independence every time.
I've been on three major trips in my life: a working holiday and month-long US roadtrip in 1992, a 17-month long trip through Asia to New Zealand starting in 1999, and a 13-month round-the-world trip taking in South America and China starting in 2003. On the second trip, whilst in Cambodia, I met my wife, Cathie. I couldn't wish for a better travelling companion, and we get away as often as we can - at the moment mostly to Europe, and almost always to somewhere new.
It was this same trip that led me to build my first real website - a platform for blogging my travel stories for family and friends even before blogging was born. It seems the web has been my playground for quite a while now...
