{"id":1317,"date":"2026-06-16T11:47:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T11:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.local\/?page_id=1317"},"modified":"2026-06-18T11:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T11:03:15","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"About me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"wp-block-group is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group pbs-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\" style=\"padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--80);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--80)\">\n<article id=\"article\" class=\"wp-block-group is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group article-main is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<aside id=\"side\" class=\"wp-block-group article-sidebar pbs-article-styling is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\"><figure class=\"wp-block-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"458\" src=\"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/hero-pixelated.png\" class=\"attachment-full size-full wp-post-image\" alt=\"Hero pixelated\" style=\"object-fit:cover;\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/hero-pixelated.png 560w, https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/hero-pixelated-300x245.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/figure><\/aside>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"wp-block-group article-body pbs-article-styling is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\"><h2 class=\"wp-block-post-title has-h-2-font-size\">About me<\/h2>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-h-5-font-size\">Hey there! My name is Peter, \ud83d\udc4b and I&#8217;m a Front-End WordPress Developer and Designer based in gorgeous London, UK. I&#8217;ve been a front-end web developer for over six years and have been making websites since 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I still remember the pride I felt after assembling my first website in Windows Notepad, and the thrill of putting it on some sketchy free hosting service. Back then, being able to claim some land on the web felt very cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How it Started<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Showing my classmates a website I implemented made me feel like a god amongst men, I loved it and was determined to make the web my career. I quickly realised there was some pocket money to be made in making themes too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a dogged will and determination, I taught myself how to code and made three templates for Tumblr\u2014 and even sold a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was through this process that I discovered my love for typography, graphic design, interaction design, user experience and, of course, Dribbble. It was my favourite place on the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Making websites was my way of putting a mark on the world, and it became my craft, though I didn&#8217;t even know it yet. I wanted people to feel something, to love what they were seeing. I obsessed over animation speeds, carefully picked the right easing, added a subtle inset drop shadow on buttons, scoffed at anyone who made their headlines pure black, set a line-height below 1.3 for paragraph text, exceeded the 12-words-per-line rule, or didn&#8217;t use a baseline grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In essence, I became a nutter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But who cares? This newfound craft made me leap out of bed every morning and promised to pay the bills, so I thought I&#8217;d stick with it. For better or worse. (ouu intrigue)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Getting Serious<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A few sales of my Tumblr theme gave me the confidence to pursue this thing. I designed a few templates for Bootstrap (back when that was the fastest way to make websites and the .clearfix hack ruled the day) and learned a hell of a lot about responsive design, templating and the quirks of CSS. Back then, vertically aligning things gave you incredible street credentials, and I mastered it \ud83d\ude0e (thanks StackOverflow, wouldn&#8217;t have done it without you).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I quickly learned about WordPress but found it too headache-inducing. I vowed to redesign\u2122 it for the better and even built a typography-conscious theme, which I called TIMES. I put it on ThemeForest and sold 400 copies. That&#8217;s 400 people using my site, in all different languages, customising the living daylights out of it. I learned a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the one-person army, I was in charge of providing support and served every customer myself. I wanted everyone who bought the product to feel like they&#8217;d booked into the Ritz or a 5-star hotel, with customer support to rival what Apple was offering. In doing so, I learnt a lot about the web, but also about people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It sounds crazy, but this made me understand how important the human is in the whole process. Websites are just pieces of technology, a means to an end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Moving to London<mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-shade-50-color\"> <\/mark><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-shade-40-color\">(and Becoming a Full-time Web Designer and Developer)<\/mark><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>And just as I was having these epiphanies, life quietly steered me on, and before I knew it, I was starting a sociology degree and working on websites part-time (ThemeForest brought me a couple of freelance clients).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Upon graduating, I moved to London and got a job as a WordPress developer at The Podcast Host Ltd. It was my first time working full-time on a real-world site with 1.6 million annual visitors, where even a small mistake could lead to downtime and lost business. It was a trial by fire, quite a way to enter adulthood, all while the pandemic was raging on. But I learnt a lot and I emerged stronger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I upgraded their codebase to the latest stack and tore my hair out trying to make WordPress behave and stay lean, but I got there in the end. I still remember the satisfaction when our CEO congratulated me, on a public Slack channel, out of the blue, for keeping the site in the green for over half a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I deepened my craft, dropped the training wheels of jQuery and learnt some proper JavaScript. I started looking at things like Cherry MX keyboards, basically becoming a programmer, and started name-dropping words like node, the scope chain, reactive programming, the execution stack and profusion.js (ok, I made that one up). I built and redesigned websites, and created graphics and motion graphics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Exploring UX Design<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I also became really interested in UX and user interfaces. So much so that I was invited to join Alitu Podcasting Ltd as a UX designer. I loved it, but I felt my graphic design toolkit was inadequate for solving people&#8217;s problems with technology, and I realised that design books can only take me so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After exploring various bootcamps and finding them too good to be true, I decided to get a proper Master&#8217;s degree in Human-Computer Interaction Design from City, University of London. And boy, was that a good choice. I learned how to do user research. I learned interaction design history, and things finally started to click. Best of all, I reconnected with my youthful love of science and learned that design can be quantified and studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The degree also helped me see the rich diversity in the world, and how inclusive practices can make design better for everyone. I connected with amazing people, like Brian G at Aviva, and learnt how to advocate for accessibility. I learned how to organise projects and how to story-map products to &#8216;deliver value faster&#8217;. My vocabulary was made up of statements like &#8216;agile,&#8217; &#8216;outcome-oriented&#8217; etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">UI\/UX Design at Alitu<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent a good five years at Alitu, collaborating with software engineers and trying to make podcasting incredibly easy. Our goal was to let anyone go from an idea to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, all under one roof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we did it well. Despite the well-funded competition, we were acquired by an American company backed by Y-Combinator and Bloomberg Beta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But most importantly, our <a href=\"https:\/\/love.alitu.com\/\" title=\"users absolutely loved us.\">users absolutely loved us.<\/a> Their reviews made all the stress, all the hard work, and all the startup-typical late shifts worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Apple Inc<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Even more surreal, the interface I designed ended up at Apple&#8217;s WWDC 2025:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/player.js\" async><\/script><script src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/embed\/3b8gkcjv2v.js\" async type=\"module\"><\/script><style>wistia-player[media-id='3b8gkcjv2v']:not(:defined) { background: center \/ contain no-repeat url('https:\/\/fast.wistia.com\/embed\/medias\/3b8gkcjv2v\/swatch'); display: block; filter: blur(5px); padding-top:56.25%; }<\/style> <wistia-player media-id=\"3b8gkcjv2v\" aspect=\"1.7777777777777777\"><\/wistia-player>\n\n\n\n<p>Somebody pinch me. Did that just happen? It did, and it only took me a few weeks to make sense of it: to accept that I was, in fact, now a designer. This needs a bit of explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The craft I saw in Apple products, the feel of the software, and the passion with which Jony Ive spoke about the new iMac (regardless of whether he made any sense) steered me into what I&#8217;m doing today. I would watch WWDC religiously. It was my Super Bowl, the only event I looked forward to year after year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So to see my UI in Apple Park, on stage, felt&#8230; surreal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Someone at Apple thought my interface was good enough to show on the latest iPad, at an Apple Event. I&#8217;m still making sense of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Love for the Web Never Went Away&#8230; <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>After the company got acquired, the exit money meant I could work on my own thing for a while. And that&#8217;s when I started missing the World Wide Web. I started missing making things again. I missed the bloody web. I missed WordPress. Most importantly, I missed my craft. I missed making websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have restarted my business and am freelancing again\u2014armoured with HCI knowledge, back to making products and back on the web. Did I mention I missed the web?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Let&#8217;s work together<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks for reading this far. If you liked what you saw here and have a project you&#8217;d like to work on together, please don&#8217;t heistate to get in touch. I&#8217;d love to hear more about it and see how I can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-5459b461 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/contact\/\">Get in touch<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/#portfolio\">Other projects<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Skills and Languages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-h-5-font-size\">In this section, I&#8217;ll briefly run through my skills and the coding and markup languages I know. I hope it serves as a good indicator of how I might help your company with everyday tasks and responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>HTML.<\/strong> I can write W3C-valid HTML5 markup that is <strong>semantic<\/strong>, well-organised and structured, so it&#8217;s <strong>easy to read and maintain later<\/strong>, and accessible for Assistive Technologies (ATs) and screen readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>CSS.<\/strong> I&#8217;ve been writing CSS since 2014, and I&#8217;m very familiar with the language and all its quirks. I also keep up with the latest best practices and <strong>CSS3<\/strong> properties, along with preprocessor scripting languages like SASS and LESS. I like to use the BEM naming convention and the 7-1 folder structure recommended in the SASS docs, <strong>though<\/strong> I&#8217;m flexible and open to other systems. I&#8217;m comfortable with CSS Grid, Flexbox, CSS variables, media queries, <code>rem<\/code> and <code>em<\/code> units, container queries, <code>:has<\/code>, logical properties, subgrid, <code>round()<\/code>, <code>@layer<\/code> (yay no more specificity wars) and other tools used in front-end development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JavaScript.<\/strong> My journey with JS began with the jQuery library, but <strong>I quickly decided<\/strong> to learn vanilla JS. I can now write valid ES5 and ES6 JavaScript and interact with browser APIs like the Fetch API, <strong>Promises<\/strong> and external REST APIs. I also understand <strong>JavaScript&#8217;s quirkier behaviours<\/strong> through concepts like hoisting, the scope chain, the execution stack and the &#8216;this&#8217; keyword, and I know how to debug and navigate JS libraries. My interest is only growing: <strong>I&#8217;ve begun exploring<\/strong> Node, Electron, Express.js and MongoDB, and I try to broaden my knowledge every day with courses and books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>UI and UX design.<\/strong> I strongly believe the best results come when <strong>art<\/strong> and technology join forces. That&#8217;s why I try to incorporate <strong>solid<\/strong> UI and user-experience practices into all my designs, so the end product not only looks good but is <strong>usable and intuitive<\/strong>. I draw inspiration from fields like typography, lettering, print, <strong>colour theory<\/strong>, HCI and grid systems, so the websites and products I make are clean and simple to navigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>WordPress and PHP.<\/strong> I&#8217;ve developed several WordPress themes and have come to love the platform&#8217;s expandability and versatility. I published my most recent theme, TIMES, on ThemeForest, where it&#8217;s been bought over 400 times and holds a 5-star rating. I can build valid themes and plugins with PHP, perform a manual WordPress installation, and set up hosting with cPanel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Terminal and CLIs.<\/strong> I&#8217;m comfortable navigating the terminal and file system, creating aliases and customising my .zshrc. I also know my way around VIM and CLIs for Gulp.js and other command-line tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Git and GitHub.<\/strong> I use Git as a standalone version control system and prefer the command line for managing my repo as it lets me easily add, switch, merge and rebase branches, log commits, push and pull versions of a project, and revert or reset commits. I know how to set up a .gitignore file and take an atomic approach to naming and pushing commits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SEO-friendly code.<\/strong> I understand the core concepts of SEO and can write code in line with structured-data guidelines from Google and other search engines, including RDFa Lite 1.1, JSON-LD and Microdata.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Right now, I&#8217;m taking on freelance work<strong>.<\/strong> If you&#8217;d like to work together, please get in touch. I&#8217;d love to hear about your project and see how I can help. You can <a href=\"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/contact\/\" title=\"Contact me\">reach me<\/a> at <strong><a href=\"mailto:hi@peterbsimon.com\">hi@peterbsimon.com<\/a><\/strong> or call me on <strong><a href=\"tel:+447762397190\" title=\"+44 7762 397190\">+44 7762 397190<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey there! My name is Peter, \ud83d\udc4b and I&#8217;m a Front-End WordPress Developer and Designer based in gorgeous London, UK. I&#8217;ve been a front-end web developer for over six years and have been making websites since 2014. I still remember the pride I felt after assembling my first website in Windows Notepad, and the thrill [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":943,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"About me - Peter Simon","description":"Hey there! My name is Peter, \ud83d\udc4b and I'm a Front-End WordPress Developer and Designer based in gorgeous London, UK. I've been a front-end web developer for over s"},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1317","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1317\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterbsimon.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}