Simon Tuckett
A short biography

Following an education at Aylesbury Grammar School in England, Simon moved with his parents to Canada and studied television and film graphics at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology. He graduated two years later with High Honours. In preparation for his future career in graphics he worked for a landscape company cutting grass, pulling weeds and digging gardens. He later honed his illustration skills at an industrial fabrication plant as a line painter on an assembly line painting swing sets, vending machines and ceiling speaker vents. Over the next few years he also prepared for the frenetic pressure of the graphic design industry by working part-time nights as a Psychiatric Assistant at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry.

Six months after leaving college he managed to break into his chosen field and spent two years working as an audio-visual and film animation consultant at the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. After a year long trip travelling across Asia he returned to Canada and began working as a freelance graphic designer and photographer.

In 1980 he formed his own company, GraphiComp Design, and in 1986 began using micro-computers in the day-to-day operations for design, layout, illustration and assembly. At the time it was ground breaking stuff!

Also in 1986, he began producing Graphic Perspective, a newsletter which, with its Premier issue, won the MacUser Desktop Publisher of the Year award in the newsletter category. The newsletter later became a quarterly supplement to the Canadian desktop publishing magazine Electronic Composition & Imaging of which Simon was the founding editor.

He has been a member of the visiting faculty at the Banff Publishing Workshop and is frequently called upon to give presentations at international conferences and seminars on micro-computer graphics. His involvement in the future of graphic design tools has been strong, frequently alpha and beta-testing future graphics products for well known software companies such as Altsys Corporation, Adobe Systems and Letraset. He has also conducted advanced microcomputer graphics workshops for Dynamic Graphics Educational Foundation in Peoria, Illinois. In addition, Simon has been a frequent contributor to various computer graphics magazines such as Personal Publishing, Step-By-Step Graphics, SBS Digital Design, Applied Arts, MacWorld, and Desktop, the Swedish desktop publishing magazine. For the past year or so he has been writing regular articles for PhotoShop Fix.

In early 1989 he was invited by John Labatt Limited to form a hi-tech graphic design firm that would be modeled along the lines of a recording studio. The company was to be called RoboShop and after submitting an initial proposal, Simon became the company's Director of Creative Services. In 1991, Simon joined with John McLean and Melody Andrews to purchase the company from John Labatt Limited. The company prospered through the 90's growing at times to over 30 employees. Ten years later the company was sold to Imaginex where Simon continued to work as the Creative Director. Within a year and a half Imaginex went into receivership and Simon was back on his own... thinking perhaps, that it was something he should have done much sooner.

He continues to operate GraphiComp Design doing illustration and retouching for art directors at such agencies as Wunderman, Naked, Medicus, Enterprise CS, gjp advertising, Ove Design and Quantum as well as design and web sites for a variety of direct clients.

Simon lives in the Beaches area of Toronto with his wife Melody Andrews, their son Mitchell, a dog who gets great pleasure from irritating their two cats, three fish, 9 seamonkeys, and a whole pile of illustrations that have yet to see the light of day.