Hi! Welcome to my website! My name is Cobain Schofield, I'm a 17 year old website developer, graphic designer and lighting designer from Liverpool, England. I'm currently studying Biology, Physics, Geography and Computing for A-Level at Wirral Grammar Boys.
To learn more about me, please choose from one of the three options below:
If you would like to ask any questions, address any queries, or get a quote off me, just click , or you may find it useful to check out some of ?
I have been designing and building websites since December 2007. I am 100% self-taught mainly by using books and dissecting other websites which over the years has helped me to build a strong understanding across an array of programming languages and software packages.
I like to build websites that tick all the right boxes, look stunning and work beautifully. I try to incorporate all the latest web technologies into each site I build to ensure that they are able to cope with demands imposed on them by visitors and so that they will operate well into the future without any issues.
I use PHP to program the 'behind-the-scenes' bits of websites, often utilising MySQL databases to store/retrieve data, I then build up the physical website with HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery so that it looks amazing and works like a dream.
All websites I build are designed by default to run across all leading browsers, including the latest releases of Firefox, Aurora, Safari and Internet Explorer as well as being backwards compatible with some legacy versions of these browsers. After all, you don't eat a half-baked loaf of bread, so why settle for a 'half-baked' website that is not cross-browser compatible?
As well as testing websites for cross-browser compatibility, I also rigorously test for cross-platform compatibility by accessing them on PC's, iPhones and Android Phones so you can be sure that your site is easy to access by a large audience.
I am available for any website design work no matter how large or small. I am also available as a freelancer for web design companies. If you're interested in hiring me, please click to get in touch!
My graphic design skills range from designing logos and brands for companies, to designing things for print such as business cards and brochures, to designing small graphics to build up websites such as background images.
I am familiar with the Adobe family of products, more specifically Creative Suite 3 (Adobe CS3) and I use 3 programs on a regular basis to construct graphics, they are Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Illustrator CS3 and Adobe FireWorks CS3. I began learning Photoshop 7 at the age of 10 to edit images I took on my camera; just simple things like re-sizing and cropping. However, since getting into website design in 2007 my skills in Photoshop have vastly increased. During the last year I have started using Illustrator and Fireworks as these specialise in Vector graphics and animated GIF's which are sometimes incorporated into website design projects but are more frequently used in print designs.
Please visit the 'My Work' link in the menu above to see some examples of my graphic design work.
My main graphic design skills are logo design, making graphical elements for websites and designing things for print. If you'd like me to quote you for any graphical job you may have please click on 'Contact Me' in the menu above.
I have been a lighting technician at Wirral Grammar School since September 2009 when I first enrolled and I have been a lighting designer since September 2010.
During the last 3 years I have been involved in 4 large-scale productions, 10 charity events and approximately 10 music concerts. The last four large-scale productions have been:
- Sweeney Todd (March 2010)
- Up 'n' Under (June 2010)
- Cabaret (April 2011)
- We Will Rock You (March 2012)
Although lighting design sounds simple, it is infact incredibly complex and involves a lot of logical thinking to design and lateral thinking to over-come problems. As the lighting designer, it is my responsibility to design a preliminary light show idea and take it from paper to reality over a just a few weeks, this involves sorting out the hire of equipment and the managing of the budget.
In We Will Rock You 2012 (the schools largest ever production), There were over 60 individual lights, approximately 60m of rigging and over 1km of cables hired in to power and control lights and speakers. We had a massive budget for WWRY of just under £8000 to hire in lighting and sound equipment for one week, sourcing equipment from 4 local hire companies. You should also note that all lighting, sound and visual operation was done by a small team of incredibly talented students at the school with no staff intervention, except for Mr Woodham who kindly diagnosed and fixed a major problem which we had with our 12 radio microphones.
After the show had ended I added a photo album to facebook showing the various stages of the show from planning and design to setup and execution. Its a good album and it illustrates perfectly how much work went into making We Will Rock You (WWRY) what it was. Click here to view it (Note: this is a public gallery viewable by anybody).
Below is a list of all my work to date; my smallest job to my biggest job and everything in between.
The list shows the wealth of experience that I have in web development, graphic design and more recently, lighting design.
Feel free to have a look around my portfolio and please visit some of the links to sites that I have built.
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Tabitha's Treasures Giftware (Web Design) Tabitha's Treasures is a new giftware company based in Merseyside that specialises in personalised and British gifts. They needed a website that they could manage themselves through a CMS that allowed them to add, edit and delete products, add and delete voucher codes, process PayPal payments, allow customer accounts and Royal Mail tracking module. The finished site is exactly what they wanted: something that loads quickly and smoothly and is easy to use for administrators and customers and with a total turnaround of just 12 days! I also work as technical support for Tabitha's Treasures, helping customers with any issues regarding payments and refunds via the website. |
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Simmons Spares and Repairs (Web Design/Photography) Simmons Spares and Repairs is an online honey-pot site for information about vintage Simmons Electronic Drum Equipment. I was approached in February 2012 and asked if I could build a site that would be able to display vintage electrical products but look futuristic and fresh at the same time. The end product was 'just what they needed'. It features a dynamic page loading system, an easy-to-use shopping cart with PayPal integration and a streamlined order management system for the site owners to keep on-top of their sales. All the photographs on this site were taken by me during a photography session organised by the client. Link: www.simmonsspares.com |
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Koby Drums (Web Design/Graphic Design) Koby Drums are an electronic drum design and manufacturing company based in Liverpool, England. The recent launch of their new Mk.3 NANO-Pads sparked them to get a simple web presence which allowed customers to place orders online for different coloured NANO-Pads. I am currently working with Koby Drums on a total re-launch which includes a complete new corporate identity and re-branding. It is very exciting to be part of this on-going project which will launch (hopefully) October 2012 Link: www.kobydrums.co.uk |
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PRS Electronics Liverpool (Web Design) PRS Electronics is a general electronics store in Liverpool City Centre, they sell new items, second-hand items and offer a repairs service. The PRS Electronics website is an online catalog of their products whereby customers can log on and purchase products at their leisure and get their order delivered. The site features a purpose built program that incorporates PayPal IPN and Royal Mail parcel tracking and allows the admin in the store to fully manage products and orders. Featuring over 300 products, the site runs smoothly and returns results and webpages quickly. |
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C&K Student Homes (Web Design) C&K Student Homes are a student homes letting company based in Liverpool, offering student accomodation throughout the city, catering for its many universities. They needed a static website to show their properties. All graphics were supplied with this website in a .psd format, I had to slice each piece and construct the website from the Photoshop file that I was given. Link: www.ckstudenthomes.co.uk |
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Paul Walsham (Web Design) Paul Walsham is a professional drummer / percussionist, currently working as the drummer / percussionist for Hurts. Paul needed a clean and fresh website that was simple to use and navigate utilising a neutral palette of browns, black and white. The site is complemented with it's slow fade pictures featured throughout the website. Link: www.paulwalsham.com |
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I Can Read Your Mind Game (Web Design) I made this game during a 2 hour double-free that I had in school. I had nothing else to be getting on with so I decided to have a go at making this game. The game uses an algorithm to log the actions that the user enters into the computer, does some calculations and then outputs the number it thinks you have thought of. I have tested this with 100's of combinations and unless you don't follow the instructions, the computer will guess your number correctly 100% of the time! It literally takes 30 seconds to complete. Give it a go and see how it gets on with reading your mind! |
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Look at the Dot Mind-Reading Game (Web Design) The sequal to the 'I can read your mind' game, again made during a free in school after my 2012 winter A-Level exams had finished. I won't go into detail with how this one works, on average only 6% of people figure out how it works. Give it a go. It takes 60 seconds of your time, but you can share it and trick your friends into thinking that their computer can read their mind! |
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Strike 3 Game (Web Design) Another one of my 'mind-reading' games, this time I made this whilst waiting for an equipment delivery for We Will Rock You in school. This one is quite a bit more complicated than the other games but it follows a similar concept. "It's name is related to baseball, yet it has nothing in common with baseball, but you must use the title to work out how it works" |
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Drum Teachers (Web Design) Drum Teachers is the UK's largest directory of Drum Teachers, allowing students to log on and search for their ideal teacher. My largest project to date, this website utilises some complex programming to generate pages from databases and performs complex SQL queries to search multiple tables within the database. The site also has a remote backup server which runs a mirror database which syncs once per hour incase of a local database problem, the database can automatically switch to the remote server. Link: www.drumteachers.co.uk |
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Gong Forum (Web Design) Gong Forum is an international forum for the discussion of gongs. The forum is built on a well known and stable engine called SMF. The soft colours are designed to be pleasent on the eye as most users spend a lot of time on the forum. It is very easy for everybody to use and easy for the administrators to manage in the back-end. The forum is the newest Gong specialist forum on the internet. Link: www.gongforum.co.uk |
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VSDSV - Virtual SDS 5 (Graphic Design) The VSDSV is a graphic design that I am currently working on for commercial software. I can't give too much away about this at the moment due to strict client confidentiality, but I'll be uploading more info in due course. |
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All Round Tree Care (Website / Graphic Design) All Round Tree Care was one of the first websites I had ever made for a local company. The site was a business card site displaying the services that All Round offered to its customers. There was also an e-quotation form which allowed potential customers to get an instant price quote for their particular job. The website was buily in 2009 and unfortunately the company did not wish to continue their online presence and in late 2011 it came offline. |
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Blues Makers Band (Website / Graphic Design) One of my very first websites going right back to the latter half of 2008, this website was designed for a local Blues band who worked around Merseyside, Cheshire, Fflint and Powys. The website showed the bands playlist, information about each member of the band including musical background, it had a 'Next Gig' feature on each page showing fans where the next gig was and it even allowed people to book the band for private functions and allowed the client to choose songs from the playlist. Unfortunately this band no longer exists and the website came down in July 2010. |
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Mersey Media (Logo / Graphic Design) In 2009 I was approached by a local company; Mersey Media and asked to design a logo. However after finishing the logo and asking the company for approval I could not establish contact with them and there was no trace of them ever existing, so I was left with this. Its simple and straight to the point, showing off the companies corporate colours. |
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Sweeney Todd (March 2010) (Lighting Design) This was my first ever major show as a lighting 'apprentice' at Wirral Grammar. An absolutely fantastic show! I can still remember it almost word perfectly to this day! |
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Cabaret (April 2011) (Lighting Design) An interesting show to say the least! Incredibly challenging given that the stage had to come out into the audience and we only had a fixed lighting rig over the 'normal' stage position to light it with. |
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We Will Rock You (March 2012) (Lighting Design / General Technician) We Will Rock You 2012 was the schools largest ever production, there were over 60 individual lights used and over 1km of cables hired in to power and control lights and speakers. We had a massive budget for WWRY of just under £8000 to hire in lighting and sound equipment for one week. We sourced equipment from 4 local hire companies. You should also note that all lighting, sound and visual operation was done by a small team of incredibly talented students at the school with very little staff intervention (thanks to Mr Woodham for fixing and setting up the wireless mics and sound equipment!). After the show had ended I added a photo album to facebook showing the various stages of the show from planning and design to setup and execution. Its a good album and it illustrates perfectly how much work went into making We Will Rock You (WWRY) what it was. Click here to view it (Note: this is a public gallery viewable by anybody). |
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Wirral's Got Talent (November 2011) (Lighting Design / Sound Technician) A charity talent show following the format of Britains Got Talent. During the auditions I was a sound technician controlling the levels of microphones and musical instruments etc and during the quater final, semi final and -the- final I was the lighting designer for the show working closely with the backstage team and the lighting technicians over radio. |
You can contact me by using the contact form below.
You can also contact me by telephone on 07896932526
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Why not follow me on Twitter? @CobainSchofield