About the Silicon Web

The Silicon Web is the web site of Bruce Coker, an English web site developer, graphic designer, writer, musician and cook.

I'm based mainly in Ireland where I've lived for 12 years, but these days I try to spend as much time as possible in the south of France, where I find I can do most of my work quite happily AND go outside more often than in Ireland, usually without either freezing or drowning.

I've been working in the graphic arts for more than 15 years. In the early days I printed T-shirts using lino cuts, and also painted my designs onto tins and boxes. Although lino cuts created fantastic textures on fabric, especially when used with bleach rather than printing ink, the process was very hard to control so I quickly moved on to screen printing. Around that time (1995) I also discovered the design potential of the PC. It was a natural progression from creating T-shirt designs with Photoshop and Corel Draw to using these and other tools for a wider range of graphic purposes, including web design, photo enhancement and DTP.

The PC also satisfied my geek tendencies. I couldn't stop myself from learning the intricacies of how these amazing machines worked. This led me into new areas, and I ended up taking a long sabbatical from creative pursuits while I worked in areas as diverse as technical support, eLearning and server ops. However, the creative impulse is strong, and in recent times I've returned to design work which is ultimately more satisfying than simply making machines work or teaching other people how to use them.

In my occasional moments of spare time, I also move things about in my big red truck (the 'van rouge').