Welcome aboard Megan Tinsley

Web developer Megan Tinsley joins the crew, bringing with her a background in art and design. Get to know Megan better, as she discusses MySpace, music, and mandalas.

Originally, I come from an art and design background – at school it was the subject I enjoyed the most, but at the time of leaving, it wasn’t really seen as a career to progress in. From a young age, I spent a lot of time on computers (I remember waiting for those three worlds on AOL to load up, and no one could ever ring our house phone because I was always on dial up!). I was always customising my Myspace profile with all the sparkly gifs and media embeds, and changing colours of the text. 

Music was also a big inspiration for me growing up, with much of my youth spent hanging around Leeds Cockpit before gigs in hopes of catching a glimpse of my favourite pop punk bands. Sometimes, it paid off!

After finishing my A-levels, I decided to take the foundation course in Art and Design at Batley School of Art, which surprisingly turned out to be my guiding path towards web development as a career. It was here I went to a university fair and came across the Interactive Design course at the University of Lincoln. It spoke volumes to me, so naturally I applied and was offered a place. 

Interactive Design was a multimedia course which allowed me to explore design and digital technologies. At the time, responsive web development was starting to take off and it was here that I was introduced to the Bootstrap framework, which I enjoyed playing around with. 

I’ve always worked for agencies. The combination of culture and working with likeminded people is right up my street, and is how I’ve best learned new technologies, bringing them to life through web app development. I’ve worked for The Design Bank in Huddersfield, and a small boutique agency called Smith in Huddersfield, and have had the privilege to work on a huge variety of projects. 

My role at Smith came to an end, and I was contacted by The Bigger Boat. After looking through their impressive portfolio, I decided this sounded like my cup of tea and came in for my interview. I liked the culture and the crew members I met that day, so when I was offered the position (I was in the middle of Boots at the time!) it was a no-brainer and I accepted. 

I’ve loved my first couple of weeks so far, and for the first time in my career I feel I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. The support from my fellow crew is amazing, and I feel well looked after. I’m very much looking forward to getting my nose stuck into lots of cool projects. 

When I’m not coding, art is still very much at the root of my hobbies. I love to draw mandalas in my spare time, which are sacred geometric patterns. They’re super relaxing to create and they allow my forever talking mind to switch off every once in a while! I also study French, as growing up I spent my summer holidays there a lot and I love the language. Plus, it’s good to keep your brain ticking away at something!