I’m Paul. 25 years in web and UI design, from junior designer to Managing Director, and for the last seven years lead designer for a full-service agency in Atlanta. Now I do it from Chiang Mai, on UK hours.
“Paul has a brilliant can-do attitude and a real talent for making complex technical decisions feel simple and straightforward.”
Client testimonialOn this page
My story
Junior designer, long hours, steep learning curve. Over time I worked my way up through senior designer and front-end developer roles, then Creative Director and eventually Managing Director at a full-service Manchester agency. That’s a lot of briefs, a lot of clients and a lot of lessons learned the hard way.
I hold a BSc (Hons) in Multimedia & Website Development from the University of Bolton, from back when building a website meant hand-coding everything and loving it. Those fundamentals still shape how I approach every project today.
For the last seven years I’ve been the lead designer for a full-service agency in Atlanta, US. I work fully remotely and deliver everything from UX strategy and Figma prototypes through to pixel-perfect WordPress builds and brand work.
“AI doesn’t replace experience. It amplifies it. And 22 years of experience is a decent base to build from.”
Paul DowdWork history
Seven roles, one thread. Shop windows taught me where the eye goes, a production line taught me speed, a great mentor taught me craft, and freelancing has run alongside all of it.
Bar width = years in each role. The dashed strip shows freelance work running in parallel.
3 years
Rip Rap Fashions · Assistant Manager & Visual Merchandiser
My first proper taste of visual thinking, before I even knew design was a career. Visual merchandising is essentially UX for physical retail: arranging product, colour and space to guide behaviour and drive decisions.
Managing the shop floor meant understanding how people moved through a space, what caught their eye and what didn’t. I learned how to tell a visual story without words, how hierarchy and composition influence what people see first, and how a well-considered layout converts browsers into buyers. Every principle I applied to window displays maps directly to how I approach a web page today. The eye always goes somewhere. You might as well decide where.
Before pixels, I was arranging space to guide people’s eyes.
4.5 years
Family transport business · Junior Partner
This one sits slightly outside the design story, but it’s part of mine. Working in the family business while studying for my degree taught me more about discipline, responsibility and commercial reality than any classroom.
Running a business, even as a junior partner, means understanding margins, deadlines, logistics and people. It means being accountable when things go wrong and solving problems quickly without the luxury of overthinking. The practicality, the delivery focus and the understanding that creative work exists inside a commercial context have shaped how I operate as a designer ever since. I showed up, I grafted, and I got my degree. Not everyone does both.
Running a business taught me that delivery is everything.
3 years
Autotrader · Website Designer
Fresh out of university and straight into the deep end. Autotrader in 2004 was a production operation: one homepage per day, every day, for car dealerships across the UK.
The workflow was Photoshop to ImageReady, slicing layouts pixel by pixel, then dropping them into an iframe. By modern standards it sounds brutal. At the time it was the best training ground I could have found. Speed, consistency, client requirements, production pressure. I learned to make design decisions fast and stand by them, and that good enough and on time beats perfect and late every time.
One website a day. Every day. It made me fast and it made me sharp.
4 years
Grow Studio · Web Designer & Front-End Developer
If Autotrader taught me speed, Grow Studio taught me craft. Working under Dale Palmer was a turning point. He showed me what considered, purposeful web design actually looked like.
For the first time I was building real websites with real front-end code, and learning that design and its technical execution aren’t separate disciplines. They’re the same conversation. Dale had high standards and the patience to explain why they mattered. I learned CSS properly here, and learned to think about hierarchy, whitespace and typography with intention rather than instinct. Every good mentor changes the trajectory of a career. Dale changed mine.
A great mentor doesn’t just teach skills. They change your whole trajectory.
2 years
Lamp Media · Head of Design
My first leadership role, and the shift from producing work to being responsible for the quality of everyone else’s. I set the creative direction and signed off what went out the door with the agency’s name on it.
Leadership in a creative environment isn’t about having the best ideas. It’s about creating the conditions for good ideas to emerge, giving feedback that improves work without crushing confidence, and holding a consistent quality bar even when timelines are tight. It was challenging, occasionally uncomfortable and exactly the kind of experience that prepares you for everything that comes after.
Leadership means being responsible for the quality of everyone’s work, not just your own.
3 years
First Internet · Freelance UI Designer & Front-End Dev
Returning to hands-on front-end work after a leadership role was a deliberate choice. The era of Bootstrap, Sass and increasingly complex responsive requirements, and I wanted to stay genuinely capable, not just design-adjacent.
The discipline of freelancing suited me: the accountability, the client management, the self-reliance. Nobody checks your work before it ships, and that focus sharpens everything. It was during this period that I realised remote, focused, independent working was where I did my best thinking.
Freelancing is simple: nobody checks your work before it ships.
8 years
Floatleft · Web Designer & Front-End Developer
The thread that runs through everything. Over seventeen years I’ve designed and built websites for agencies, startups, established businesses and everything in between.
From single-page builds to complex WooCommerce stores, from branding projects to full UI/UX systems designed in Figma and built in Elementor from scratch. Freelancing taught me how to manage clients, hit deadlines without a safety net, price my work properly and keep getting better without anyone telling me I had to. It’s given me the career I actually wanted: varied, self-directed and built around doing good work for people who value it.
No safety net. No excuses. Just good work, delivered.
AI-augmented
Not as a gimmick, and not to write bad copy. I use AI to research UX patterns faster, sanity-check accessibility decisions, generate and refactor front-end code, produce component documentation and move from concept to prototype at a pace that was impossible a few years ago.
If you’re an agency wondering whether AI makes freelancers obsolete or superhuman, it’s definitely the second one. Come find out.
Get in touch ›
Anthropic course, completed. Claude and Claude Code are part of my daily workflow.
UX research Design critique Code generation Docs
# How Paul works with Claude
## Rules
- I make the design decisions. You check them.
- Accessibility: WCAG 2.2 AA, no exceptions.
- Elementor builds use global variables,
never hard-coded colours.
- Mobile first. Test at 390, 768, 1440.
## Good jobs for you
- Audit a page for contrast and alt text
- Refactor CSS into reusable classes
- Write component docs from a Figma frame
- Turn a wireframe into a working prototype
## Never
- Write client copy without a brief ✗
- Ship anything I haven’t reviewed ✗
What I believe
Every role taught me something I still use. These are the ones I’d put on the wall.
The eye always goes somewhere. You might as well decide where.
Every layout I design starts with one question: what should someone see first, second and third?
Good enough and on time beats perfect and late.
Design and code are the same conversation.
Good feedback improves the work without crushing the person.
Creative work lives inside a commercial reality.
Nobody checks your work before it ships.
So I check it twice. Every build gets a full accessibility and responsive pass before you see it.
AI amplifies experience. It doesn’t replace it.
The tools got faster. The judgement still has to come from somewhere.
How I work
The same process whether it’s a landing page or a 40-template WordPress build. Timings are typical for a 6–10 page site.
A call to understand the business, the audience and what success looks like. I come back with questions, not a quote.
Day 1–2Structure and content hierarchy in Figma before any colour. Cheap to change, and the client signs off the bones.
Week 1Full UI at desktop, tablet and mobile, with a token-based style guide your developers will actually use.
Week 2–3Built in Elementor on the Hello theme with global styles. Tested, documented and easy for your team to edit.
Week 3–5A working day
My day starts as the UK opens and finishes as Atlanta gets going, so UK clients get the full working day and US clients get the morning.
Six people who have hired me, some of them more than once.
We’ve worked with Paul on many projects and have never been let down. His professional approach and vast online understanding make for a smooth-running, within-budget job.
Paul is the perfect freelance web designer. He is quick, reliable and works independently on solutions. If a company works directly with him they get the biggest gain, because they are getting the quality of work London agencies would charge double for. I consistently recommend Paul to clients without hesitation.
Paul is a great front-end HTML/CSS coder. He’s fast, he writes good standards-compliant code and he’s flexible. He’s happy to accommodate unusual requirements but he’s also good at recommending different approaches, without putting anyone’s back up. I’ve hired him several times and would do so again.
Always good quality and done in good time. Paul has a ‘can do’ attitude. Would be happy to use again and refer you.
I would highly recommend Paul. He has great attention to detail and always delivers on time and on budget. He is always open to new ideas and pushing the boundaries of online design.
We have worked on many projects together. Paul is able to translate techie-lingo into plain, understandable English. Recommended to anyone looking for a professional web company for marketing purposes.
FAQ
Yes. Most of my agency work is white-label. I can join your Slack, use your email signature and sit in client calls as part of your team.
I work 14:00–22:00 Thailand time, which is 08:00–16:00 in the UK. You get a full UK working day of overlap, plus the US morning for teams in the States.
Elementor Pro on the Hello theme is my default for WordPress because clients can edit it safely. I also hand-code with HTML, Sass and Tailwind when a project needs it.
A fixed number of days each month, booked in advance, at a lower day rate than one-off work. Unused days roll over for one month.
No. AI helps me research, check and build faster. Every design decision and every line that ships has been reviewed by me.
Usually within one to two weeks. Small fixes for existing clients can often happen the same day.
Crafting websites since 2005
Agency partnerships, freelance briefs and monthly retainers. I reply within one working day.
