From Bridlington to the Web
I was born and raised in Bridlington, East Yorkshire. It's a town with a strong artistic heritage. The late great David Hockney, who passed away recently, is perhaps its most famous known artist for the area. Art and design have always had a strong presence across the East and North Yorkshire coastlines and growing up here I studied Fine Art as a teenager, drawn to that creative world around me.
When it came to university I followed that creative instinct and studied Computer Games Modelling and Animation at the University of Derby. It was there that web development properly took hold of me. I had the opportunity to build my own portfolio website as part of my course and rather than reaching for a website builder that would do the work for me, I went the other way entirely. I designed every asset in Photoshop, built it in Dreamweaver and figured out how to host it on my own domain.
That Fine Art background has never left me. I genuinely believe it's one of the things that makes me a better web designer and developer. Understanding colour, composition, hierarchy and how design makes people feel are not skills you pick up from a coding tutorial. They come from years of studying and thinking about art and design. It's a combination that I think is quite rare in web development and it's something I'm genuinely proud of.
It took me straight back to my teenage years when I tried to build my own gaming news website inspired by IGN. From that moment I was hooked.
The Early Career
My first job after university wasn't in 3D design as you might expect. It was in Matlock, just outside Derby, managing websites. WordPress and Magento to begin with. The start of understanding e-commerce and how the web actually works under the hood. Backend databases, frontend PHP frameworks, client relationships. Every day was different and I loved it.
It was also the era of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, when everyone was playing Angry Birds and Candy Crush and apps were taking off in a way nobody had quite anticipated. I was desperate to learn how to build them. That curiosity led me to my second job in Derby where I got the opportunity to develop mobile apps, voucher finders, social discovery apps for university students, and apps never really left me after that.
My next role took me into developing across health, manufacturing, motoring and the rail industry. A broad and brilliant experience that shaped how I think about building products for real world problems.
Coming Home
Eventually I left Derby and moved back to my roots, living in Bridlington and working in Scarborough. It felt right to be back on the coast. But it also opened my eyes to something I hadn't fully appreciated when I was away.
The web and app development scene here is quite scarce.
That's not a criticism thrown carelessly. There are companies in Scarborough with a strong web and digital presence. But if I'm honest, most of what I've seen caters towards digital marketing rather than digital technology development. Web designers and developers are few and far between. App developers are even rarer. In ten years of being back in this area I've met very few web developers and only one or two app developers. What's interesting is that the developers I have met have generally moved to the area rather than being born and raised here. Those who are from here, from what I've seen, have tended to leave for cities like York and Leeds where the opportunities and the salaries are stronger. It's a familiar story for a lot of coastal and rural towns and it's something that needs to change.
That's a gap. And I think it's one worth talking about.
The Challenge of the Seaside Town
There's an obvious reason for this and it comes down to money. Scarborough doesn't pay well compared to cities. Leeds, Manchester, London. They offer salaries and benefits that are genuinely hard to compete with from a coastal town. Most developers who are here are likely working remotely for companies elsewhere, which is completely understandable. If you can live somewhere beautiful and earn a city salary from your spare room, why wouldn't you?
It's why it's difficult to find a web or app development job on the coastline. And it's why the agencies that do exist here tend to operate on a package based model. Sell you a website, take the money, move on. It's not personal, it's not bespoke and it's not what most businesses actually need. That approach frustrates me because it doesn't give the client the personal experience and the genuinely considered product they deserve.
Not all of them are like that. There are a handful of strong agencies here doing great work with some impressive clients and they stand out. But they are the exception rather than the rule.
The Opportunity
Here's where I want to be clear though. I don't see any of this as an excuse. I see it as an opportunity.
Scarborough has a wealth of interesting businesses. Hospitality, tourism, retail, health, the arts. Many of them could genuinely benefit from a stronger web or mobile presence. The marketing space is crowded and there are plenty of people fighting for that. There's also an abundance of digital agencies focused on brand led design including logos, business cards and marketing materials, and they do that well.
But what I find is there's very little that blends design properly with web design and web development. That combination of genuine design sensibility with technical development skill is rare here. Nobody is really fighting for that space and that to me is where the real gap is. A business doesn't just need a logo. It needs a website that looks as good as that logo, performs well and actually brings in new customers. Those two things should work together and right now on the Yorkshire coast there aren't many people who can deliver both.
With the rise of AI and the rise of remote working, geography matters less than it ever has. There's no reason a brilliant web or app developer couldn't be based in Scarborough and work with clients across the UK. We already have some world class cyber experts at GCHQ, which is based right here in Scarborough. So why not web and app experts too?
I'd genuinely love to see a tech community grow on the Yorkshire coast. Developers who don't feel they have to move to a city to build a meaningful career. People who want to be part of something here rather than somewhere else. A community that can help grow businesses across the region and beyond.
It's a wonderful part of the world. It deserves more than a package website and a logo. And I think the opportunity to build something real here is only growing.