Hey, how's it going? Pleased to meet ya :)

My name is Richard Parker (as pictured left):. I'm a Whyalla based (born and bred) graphic designer, website developer, animator and all-round creative type! I love reading and writing to death, collecting old comics and books, and generally kicking back to watch a few movies and play a couple of games on the PS2 with my friends. I also watch premier league football every weekend with me old dad - go Liverpool!

(I've probably just lost about 99% of my potential clients, but there you go.)

I'm also a bit of a sucker for community work - so if you're a non-funded not-for-profit and need something designing, I'm happy to help out!

It's a shame so many people these days seem so intent on sucking their communities and towns dry without ever giving anything back.. Life is so much richer when we share the experience with other people I think.

Right - uhhh...what's next on the list - politics. Politics is important! It's the one thing that you're not supposed to talk about, but what the hey.

Just in case you didn't know, I must warn you that I'm one of those left-leaning 'save the world' types. And yes, I care about things like education, freedom of speech, media diversity, participatory democracy, the environment, Indigenous rights, mental health and strawberry milkshakes - made with100% real ice-cream! But hey, who doesn't?

Last but certainly not least - work. As stated earlier, I draw things for a living - which you've got to admit, is a pretty sweet gig. I actually started off with a Degree in Archaeology of all things - but after being mistaken for a lump of coprolite in a science lab, I decided it was time to move on - lest I was tagged, catalogued and placed inside a wooden storage crate at the Adelaide museum or something.

Anyway, closing thoughts - graphic design isn't just a job description to me, it's a metaphor for life - we take separate, seemingly unrelated elements - drawings, photos, text, textures and ideas - and then mash them all up in the hope of creating a much more beautiful, higher functioning whole. In this, I think we're all designers in a way... creating and re-creating our own reality with each passing moment - mixing and matching colours from an infinite palate of hues - jamming abstract concepts and interesting visions together in order to shape our future as we would wish it to be.

Do not go gently into that good night friends - and as Jonathan Swift once said, 'may you live every day of your life'.