Ahmed Nuaman Freelance Designer and Developer
About Me
I'm a freelance designer and developer with a first class degree in Interaction Design. I have strong knowledge of the web design and development industry and my skills include the design and development of web sites, gadgets and rich media adverts. I'm a self-motivated individual, I'm happy to work as an individual or in a team and believe that it's better to try than to not try at all.
My skills range from OOP Actionscript 2 & 3, PHP, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript to design and real time video streaming to computer and mobile, and I'm a fully qualified Google AdWords Reseller. As I am comfortable with both design and development needs, I enjoy the challenge of balancing client and business needs in order to achieve the best outcome possible.
I've got professional knowledge of:
- Server-side: PHP, Python and MySQL
- Client-side: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Actionscript and MXML
- Programmes: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash and Flex Builder
- Usability: KISS, Accessibility and interaction design
- Designing: Web sites, YouTube brand channels, Rich-Media adverts (for TABS/GCN) and print media
- Programming: YouTube APIs, GData APIs, Flickr API, Protx 3Dsecure, PayPal API and QTSS
You can find out more about me by downloading my CV.
Contact Me
- Phone: +44 7811 184 436
- Email: ahmed@ahmednuaman.com
- Social: LinkedIn, Krop, Twitter, Facebook, W3C Sites
Recommendations
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“Ahmed is a brilliant developer, who has a strong understanding of a large range of different technologies. He stands out from the crowd by being able to communicate all that is technical to anyone at different degrees of knowledge. Passionate and always increasing his skill and overall a great guy to work with.”
Paul Vayanos, Freelance Designer, Google
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“Through working on YouTube I had the bonus of working with Ahmed - I was really impressed with his knowledge, AS3 skills and his attitude both as a mentor and in tight spots and on deadline. Recommend him Creatively, Technically and Personally.”
Tom Uglow, Senior Designer, Google
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“I used to work with Ahmed on several projects, his contribution to the projects and his attitudes was always top and helped us to create the best quality outcome. He's proactive in his work and his understanding of internet based activities is a big contribution to the whole team effort.”
Andrej Maier, Senior Digital Designer, Google
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“I have worked with Ahmed on two major projects so far! Ahmed is so great to work with! He brings to the table in-depth knowledge and an eagerness to learn even more. He is also polite, friendly and a joy to collaborate with. With his skill base and incredible work ethic, it continues to be a pleasure to work with him!”
Saina Shelton, Technical Producer, Google
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“A self-starter who's keen to dive into projects and lend a hand where necessary, and who is also keen to pin-point and start new projects where there is a more long-term need. Not only does Ahmed know a great deal about his own role, but he also understands how to clearly communicate with other colleagues and clients who may not be as experienced or familiar with the topics he is discussing. He is also a very friendly, positive and creative person to work around and can be replied upon to consider and find solutions to challenges you share with him. A massive asset to the team!”
Nicola Young, Lead Account Manager (Creative Services), Google
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“Ahmed has proved himself continuously as a talented and focussed designer. He has excellent technical knowledge and quickly established himself at Google as a go-to guy for all things Flash, Actionscript, PHP, Javascript etc. He has a great attitude and his work is concise and timely. I am very happy to recommend Ahmed; he is a great asset to any team.”
Giles Tuck, Senior Digital Designer, Google
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“Ahmed is an extremely proactive designer/developer and a delight to manage. He is always learning and constantly surprises his team-mates with innovative technological solutions to a project's challenges. I would definitely like to work w/ Ahmed again in any type of project and think he's an asset to any team he joins.”
Carlos Ferrão, Project Manager, Google
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“Ahmed's solid work ethic, excellent knowledge and skill base, attention to detail and commitment to ensure the best solution to any dev project has made him an essential member to any project team. His love for his work is always evident, continuing to keep abreast of new technologies and processes, while sharing his knowledge and learnings with his team. He always asks questions, if he is unsure and quickly processes the information and applies his learning accordingly. Ahmed has excellent communication skills, owning the ability to drive a project as well as ensure all stakeholders are kept informed. He is kind, enthusiastic and a pleasure to work with.”
Leona Farquharson, Project Manager, Google
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“Ahmed is quite frankly a digital prodigy! His broad digital knowledge is incredible, yet his depth of knowledge and practical experience within each of those areas is immense. His interest and passion for digital media is obvious and means that he is always keen to learn as much as he can, both in work and externally. Ahmed is a real asset to our team, he has a rare ability to communicate complex technical issues to non-technically minded staff in a way that is understandable yet not patronising. He also has a great sense of humour, positive 'can-do' attitude and willingness to do whatever is asked of him to the best of his abilities. I would have no hesitation in recommending Ahmed to other people in my position, looking to hire talented digital staff.”
Nadine Drelaud, Freelance Lead Project Manager, Google
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“Ahmed is a kind, outgoing and strong person who is always willing to give advice and help others. Ahmed's web skills are immense. I believe his fantastic work ethics have contributed to his well-deserved successes to date. An asset to any company.”
Amy Forbes, Graphic Designer, The Bubblegate Company Limited
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“Ahmed was one of my students at Ravensbourne. During his 3 year course he developed from a driven student into a mature thinking designer without managing to loose any of his drive. His dedication to the discipline is awesome.”
John Durrant, Course Leader, Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication
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“Ahmed was one of my dissertation students at Ravensbourne. I found him quick to learn, very focused, intelligent and ambitious - a star in the making.”
Richard Oliver, Visiting Lecturer, Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication
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“Ahmed was one of the most able students I ever taught. It was always a pleasure to work with him in seminars as his ability to combine concept with technology was very inspiring. Consequently his degree project was MA/MSc level. Beyond this his interpersonal skills are excellent and he was very engaged helping in all situations. I would always offer him a place on an MA/MSc program as well as a job.”
Martin Schmitz, Senior Lecturer, Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication
Blog Entries
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Speeding Up PureMVC Development, Part 2: The Mediator
Following my post about speeding up PureMVC development regarding the view, I’m now moving on to part two of my series on PureMVC: The Mediator. It’s handy if you understand and/or have used PureMVC before, if not, have a read of my tutorial on using and understanding PureMVC. Extending the Mediator As we know the mediator is very [...]
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Speeding Up PureMVC Development, Part 1: The View
After my tutorial on using and understanding PureMVC, I got around to write some classes that extended some of the core classes of PureMVC. The main thing that got to me was the repetition of functions such as functions that send events from a view to the mediator and so on. I think it’s just [...]
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I’ve recently had an article on the YouTube Player API for Actionscript 3 published on the Flashtuts+ network. However, some people are having issues getting to grips with loading another video in-situ, so here’s a slight change to the code: Once you read the tutorial, you will finish with two important files: YouTubePlayerWrapper.swf – The AS2 wrapper App.as [...]
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Who is Right? The Designer (/Developer) or The Client?
Back when I was at uni (Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication) I wrote my third year dissertation about a touchy subject. It was simply to see different people’s views about how they handle certain clients, or how clients handle designer/developer direction. Recently SmashingMagazine.com tweeted this: @smashingmag: What is the best way for a client to tell [...]
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Scale Any DisplayObject with My ‘ScaleObject’ Class
Update: there was a slight issue with the “height()” overrride, thanks to the comments I’ve updated the code with the fix. Most designers and developers will be familiar with Actionscript 3’s “scale9Grid“. Now when you can use “scale9Grid”, it’s awesome, but there are times when you can’t use it or it doesn’t work: You can’t use it [...]
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Tweets
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“hahaha, #microsoft #internet #explorer 8 made this lady puke: http://bit.ly/wL9Yr #msie”
— 21:03 on Thursday, 2 July -
“@Garfty yeah, but it's just getting a bit annoying know, damn #eclipse”
— 20:56 on Thursday, 2 July -
“whoop whoop my #flash #video #player for @1Click2Fame is up on their bootcamp microsite: http://www.1click2fame.com/bootcamp/”
— 20:39 on Thursday, 2 July -
“@jcrowleygr can't DM cos you're not following me ;) my folio is www.ahmednuaman.com and yep, I'm a freelancer”
— 16:41 on Thursday, 2 July -
“RT @untitledlondon: Slow motion paint bombs exploding on the blue man group: http://www.vimeo.com/2047190”
— 16:29 on Thursday, 2 July -
“@BecomeKnown it does indeed”
— 15:01 on Thursday, 2 July -
“@untitledlondon I don't see anything wrong with that, infact I'm jealous”
— 13:48 on Thursday, 2 July -
“@TheFlashBum best wishes for the future #baby”
— 13:45 on Thursday, 2 July -
“everything is just better with #puremvc, don't you think?”
— 13:34 on Thursday, 2 July
My Notable Work
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Tutorials for Flashtuts+
I've recently started writing tutorials for the web site Flashtuts+ so I can raise my profile as a skilled freelancer. I've been asked to write a few more including ones on using YouTube and Google products and APIs, and coding conventions. The first tutorial I wrote, on PureMVC, went down really well and I'll be writing about two a month now. Visit this project's web site »
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Laurence Mills Channel
My friend, Laurence Mills, required a nice and simple micro site where he could upload and publish his videos to be used as his showreel and portfolio. I suggested using a YouTube Brand Channel rather than having any old web site sitting on the web. I designed a simple style for it, running on the basis of how he created his shorts and installed the 3D Carousel Gadget that I created. Visit this project's web site »
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YouTube Brand Channel 3D Carousel
During my time at Google I was asked to create some new products for YouTube. I created this new 3D carousel, much like Apple's coverflow, using Actionscript 3 with Papervision. It's been created in a way that allows it to be fully customised, from the background gradient colours to the size of the player and whether they'd like HQ/HD as standard. The gadget can be updated through changing an XML file, and a CMS for it is in production, to be built on Google AppEngine framework in Python. Visit this project's web site »
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Google Advertising Landscape CMS
The Google Advertising Landscape (GAL for short) is an internal Google Sales tool created to aid DSOs sell Google, YouTube and GCN inventory to media buyers. It streamlines the creation of presentations, allowing sales officers to pick and customise case studies and elements to help them create the perfect pitch. I created the content management system (CMS) that the sales officers used to create their own GAL presentations. Its front-end was written in XHTML, CSS and JavaScript (jQuery) and back-end is powered by CodeIgnitor (PHP) and MySQL.
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YouTube Advertising Showcase
The YouTube Advertising Showcase is a tool that allows advertisers to see the different and innovative examples of YouTube's inventory ranging from expandable MPUs/LRECs to mastheads and brand channels. All the examples are video captured to help advertisers see the user journey. I created the front-end showcase, due to feature on YouTube, and the back-end CMS for sales officers to create and modify examples. The front and back-ends are built with Flex MXML and Actionscript 3 and uses Google App Engine (Python) for data storage and API functions.
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YouTube Brand Channel Concepts
As part of my work at Google, I not only had to develop internal and external applications, but I was also brought into projects as a designer. I was asked multiple times to come up with YouTube Brand Channel concepts for clients ranging from TopGear, BMW, Ford to GE. To create these brand channels, one must have an understanding of what YouTube is about (community videos), how and why YouTubers participate in competitions, and how to use the YouTube APIs.
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WEF Davos Debates 2009 Channel
The Davos Debates 2009 were a great way that YouTube helped users post their responses and feelings on major questions to the world's leaders. It featured a full custom brand channel gadget, created by me in Actionscript 2, and uses the YouTube Contest API with a Google App Engine (Python) proxy. The gadget proved to be highly successful and a first for YouTube. Visit this project's web site »
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YouTube Symphony Orchestra Channel
YouTube's Symphony Orchestra was a new and innovative projects that involved the YouTube community submitting videos of themselves and voting for their favourites to win a part in a special orchestra summit in New York's Carnegie Hall. I was brought in to help the guys with the project, on a Friday (two days before it went live), as they were having problems with the YouTube and Google GData APIs. I introduced them to the classes that I wrote for the Davos channel and helped them in integrating the player into their custom carousel and video wall. Visit this project's web site »
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last.fm & YouTube iGoogle Gadget Mash-up
During my time at Google, I decided to learn as much as I could about the Google GData and YouTube APIs. I decided to do a mash-up between last.fm and YouTube, whereby it would query last.fm and return a set of artists, tracks or albums, depending on your specification, and then take this to YouTube and return the highest ranking video. It's turned out to be a great way for people to get the latest gossip and tracks from their favourite artists and has had over 50,000 visitors since October 2008. Visit this project's web site »
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Coutts Location Tool
The Coutts Location Tool is a project that I created whilst working at Tangozebra, now part of Google. The client wanted an interactive and intuitive tool that allowed customers to see where Coutts branches are and how to get there. The idea was to embed Google Maps and use the Maps API to integrate fully with set locations as well as geocoding user's post codes and directions to Coutts branches. Visit this project's web site »
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Future Blogging Limited
Future Blogging are a new copywriting company who wanted their web site to stand out from the crowd. I pitched the idea of having their web site look and feel like a magazine, as most of their work is copy. The took to the idea, loved it and have had nothing but praise about their bold image. The web site was constructed with Actionscript 2 and uses XML to bind the data. Visit this project's web site »
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Brockway Consulting Limited
Brockway Consulting are a company who provide consultancy for the utility, government and rail industries. They required a sleek, modern and simple web site that would give them the ability to have a blog and keep up to date. The web site delivered is CMS based and allows the company to keep their site up to date as well add new pages, it's powered by PHP and MySQL, with an Actionscript 3 main feature, and has an XHTML and CSS compliant template. Visit this project's web site »
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Marshall Arts Photography
Mandy Marshall is a photographer who I had the pleasure to work with in a previous job. She wanted a clean, modern web site but did not require the complexity of a CMS. I proposed the idea of having her upload her photos to Flickr and for my to build a web site that fed off the Flickr API and presented her photos on her own web site. The front-end is built with Actionscript 3 and MXML and uses a PHP based proxy system to interact with Flickr's API. Visit this project's web site »
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Mosaicappeals.com Web Site
Mosaicappeals.com is a project that I created in a previous job. The concept was to create a self service style web site that allow charities and fund-raisers to come along and create a mosaic from any picture and have those tiles sold to the general public. The tiles sold would then count towards the charity's/fund-raiser's total. The system is built entirely on CodeIgnior (PHP) and uses XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript (Prototype and Script.aculo.us) for the front-end. The system also uses a Protx 3Dsecure API that I wrote. Visit this project's web site »
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FosterCare UK Web Site & SEO
FosterCare UK is a fostering agency and who I worked with in a previous job. I was in charge of creating their web site, optimising it and then creating and managing a Google Adwords PPC campaign. The web site is a CMS powered site that allows them to keep it up to date, and with the optimisation and PPC campaign, their ROI reached over 300%. Visit this project's web site »
FosterCare UK Web Site & SEO screen-shotFosterCare UK Web Site & SEO screen-shotFosterCare UK Web Site & SEO screen-shotFosterCare UK Web Site & SEO screen-shot
Other Work
Code
- Actionscript 2 — built a series of classes for Actionscript 2 that help with the interaction and integration of Google and YouTube APIs
- Actionscript 3 — extended standard and PureMVC classes to help with the development of Actionscript 3 applications
- PHP — created a series of helpers and libraries for tasks such as compressing components, aiding with HTML and authentication
- JavaScript — generated a base prototype to help with the agile and speedy development of web sites and JavaScript applications
- Python — used Google App Engine and Django framework to built APIs and proxies that aided with the interaction of YouTube and Google projects
Advertising
- Natwest — a series of animated custom creatives for Natwest Cricket Series newsletters
- Visit Iceland — a series of animated and interactive MPUs and banners for the Visit Iceland campaign
- Starwoods Westin Paris — a microsite for the launch of the new Starwoods Westin Paris hotel
- ...and more
Web sites
- Dr Amal Ahmed — Flash Front-end with Google Maps API for Flash Integration
- Alias Hosting — PHP/MySQL Custom System with Domain Whois "look up", Customer Database and PayPal Integration
- TheTeams.info — PHP/MySQL Custom System with Customer and Team Management Database and Merch eCommerce System
- FireStarter Media Limited — PHP/MySQL Custom System with Back-end CRM and CMS with Integrated Search Engine and APIs
- European Advisory Service — ASP.NET CMS, AJAX/PHP API, PHP/MySQL CRM
- Heath Farm — PHP/MySQL CMS
- St Mark's Hospital — PHP/MySQL CMS, Publication Search-engine and Online Shop with Protx Integration
- St Mark's Hospital Foundation — PHP/MySQL CMS, Flash JustGiving Widget, Online Donations through Protx
- Community Foster Care — PHP/MySQL CMS with sIFR Integration
- European Botanical Forum — PHP/MySQL CMS with Flash Image Banner
- The Daisy Chain — PHP/MySQL CMS with sIFR Integration
- Blackfriars Scenery — PHP/MySQL/XML CMS with simple FTP Integration
- Blue Sky Labs — PHP/MySQL CMS with Flash Front-end
- Resbond — PHP/MySQL custom CMS with Interactive Quote Creator
- ...and more
© Ahmed Nuaman 2009. Looking for web design? Visit FireStarter Media Limited.
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