About

Hi. I’m Dave.

Thanks for looking!

Work

I’m the main shareholder, director and general technologist at Standfirst, a small web design and development studio based in Liverpool that punches waaaay above our weight. It’s a part of Interconnect. Collectively we own Design Week, where my role is publisher. And editor. Yes. I am busy. Why did you ask?

Politics

If you care to search, you’ll discover I’m a raging Liberal Democrat. I’m not shy about it. I also know that if power was what I sought, I’d be in one of the bigger parties, because that’s the path to it. Instead I do the Lib Dem thing as a means to an end – it helps act as a fulcrum which prevents the main parties swinging too far one way or another. It can also help raise and highlight issues that might otherwise go ignored. Sometimes this has caused me to receive death threats and hate on my social media. But somebody has to say something, sometimes, and it might as well be me… because…

My Early Life

Few people spoke up for me when I was young.

My early life was a little screwed up. That’s OK – millions or even billions of people in this world have dealt with far worse. I’m still very lucky.  Occasionally I’ll talk about it here on the blog or in my social media because it can be useful to others who’ve had a traumatic life. I believe in the benefits of openness. I also believe that society, teams and firms do better if everyone feels safe and protected whilst given appropriate boundaries and guidelines. I also think there needs to be realism, and sometimes that can be hard to balance off.

Life Now

I live with my lovely partner, and my lovely sons, in a small Northern town famous for its chemical industry.

Want more? Try Threads or Bluesky. You can also find me on LinkedIn, trying to make sense of it and not entirely sure that I ever had. I also post random things on Instagram. I still keep my Twitter profile alive, but only just, because I think the place has deteriorated horribly and I can’t be dealing with it. You can find me on there if you must but I’m not linking it.

I also sometimes write, mostly about automotive design, for Design Week. Here are my most recent pieces:

• Brainrot or gen Alpha genius? SWID STUDIO launches DCV’87
• The Art of the Flop: Why Design Needs the Courage to Fail
• Twenty Years of the Pentawards: From the ‘Beauty Parade’ to Purpose-Led Design
• The Outline – 26/01/2026 – Olympic flames and a very rude flat white
• How Abarth is replacing noise with “Living Pixels”
• Small wonders: how Japan’s strict regulations drove automotive creativity
• Why Volkswagen’s return to buttons is a UX triumph
• “Whatever comes along, we have an answer” – An hour with Klaus Zyciora
• Škoda unveils Vision 0 concept car
• Bentley doubles down on design with new logo, concept car and design studio