Christopher Hoult

Software engineer, actor, speaker, print designer

Blog

Before things went pretty far south for me a couple of years ago (and also partly causing it) I was marketing manager for a local theatre. I did all sorts of jobs as part of this - running social media, talking to the press, organizing programmes, running the website and making sure the printed media (posters and flyers) were created to a standard. As part of the latter, I also designed and delivered most of the publicity material over the three years I was in the job, either just typesetting someone else's art, or creating the artwork itself.

I was rather proud of my output, and how professional it looked (especially coming from someone with no real visual art background and an Adobe suite auto-didact. On top of this, other than the pressure that came with producing stuff on time, it was actually fun. Separating myself from the theatre meant I was no longer practicing these skills or creating tangible art.

So when I come to look at my own self-care, and coping with loneliness, I recognize the need to do something productive and creative with my time. A few months back I had the idea to work on a series of poster designs for prominent open-source software that I use and admire. A couple of ideas immediately sprang to mind and... I just didn't act on the concept.