About

Andi Smith likes to build highly performant websites which innovate with genuine value.

Working closely with clients and their users, Andi understands challenges and requirements from both from a technical and experience perspective. Andi balances innovation with risk to ensure that each solution is carefully considered and constructed to ensure it meets all the requirements.

Andi’s passion for technology and innovation in his role as Director of Web Development at AKQA helped the digital agency become one of most awarded and innovative in history.

Contact me

What I can do for you

Consultancy

I provide front end, user experience and NodeJS consultancy where I will assess your site and give practical technical advice on how to improve the parts that aren't working.

Architecture

I architect solutions for clients of varying sizes ensuring that your solutions are highly performant, maintainable, accessible and scale to the demand of your users while remaining relevant to your business needs.

Development

I work with developers to ensure processes, architectures and workflows are set up early on and good practices are adopted from the very beginning.

Clients

These are some of the clients I have been privileged to work with in the past offering consultancy services and architecting solutions that have led to long-term business success:

Arsenal
Barclays
Coca Cola
Coutts
EDF
Formula 1
Facebook
Hermes
Mini
Mondelez
Nike
Nissan
Rolls Royce
Tidal
Unilever
Vodafone
Volvo
World Gold Council

Technical Skills

Due to the nature of the web my technical skillset evolves with demand. These are some of my favourite technologies at the moment:

ES6
ES6
Scss
Scss
React
React
Redux
Redux
Webpack
Webpack
NodeJS
NodeJS
Serverless
Serverless

Here's some other things I'm fond of at the moment:

  • Client side & Universal/Isomorphic applications
  • Building and consuming REST APIs
  • PostgreSQL, MongoDB
  • VueJS
  • Progressive Web Apps
  • CSS methodologies such as BEM and CSS Modules
  • CSS Animations, Canvas, Video
  • Contentful, Metalsmith, Hugo
  • Continuous Integration
  • AWS, S3, Lambdas, Cloudfront
  • Bots: Watson, LUIS, Microsoft Bot Framework, TextRazor

Speaking

I would love to come and speak at your event (or run a workshop), please get in touch.

TECH.insight, London

Compére / event organiser -

Compére and speaker organiser for the regular TECH.insight London meetups. Each themed event showcased 3 speakers from companies such as Google, The Guardian and BBC.

GenerateConf, London

Optimising your workflow for performance -

Insights in to tools that can optimise your workflow and a peek in to how HTTP/2 changes the game.

Watch the video.

TECH.insight, London

Building a responsive car configurator with AngularJS -

A look in to how we built the MINI responsive car configurator in AngularJS.

MCRFred, Manchester

The Quest for the Perfect Workflow -

Re-run of the talk from jQuery UK for another audience in Manchester.

TECH.insight, London

The Quest for the Perfect Workflow -

Re-run of the talk from jQuery UK for London.

jQuery UK, Oxford

The Quest for the Perfect Workflow -

A deeper look in to how Grunt can take away many of the manual tasks required for optimising a website.

De Montfort University, Leicester

Responsive Design Workshop -

Workshop Full day workshop on how to think about, design and build responsive websites.

London Ajax User Group Meetup

Secrets of the Browser Developer Tools -

Re-run of the talk from London Web.

London Web

Secrets of the Browser Developer Tools -

A look at another 30 techniques for using the browser developer tools.

Anoraks, London

Secrets of the Browser Developer Tools -

A look at 30 techniques for getting the most of the browser developer tools.

Anoraks, London

Real Time Communication with WebRTC -

An introduction to getUserMedia and WebRTC with live demos.

Anoraks, London

Layouts of the Future -

A look in to the future of CSS with Flexbox and CSS grid.

Selenium Conference, San Francisco

Automating Canvas Applications Using Selenium -

Re-run of the talk from Building on Selenium, London.

Building on Selenium, London

Automating Canvas Applications Using Selenium -

Selenium allows us to manipulate the DOM, but how can we use it to test Canvas applications?

Writing

I love writing about web technologies. If you'd like to work together, please get in touch.

Net Magazine #280

Cover article -

Cover article for NET Magazine covering 20 more tips for mastering the browser developer tools.

Net Magazine #255

Tutorial -

A tutorial on how to use Grunt to produce responsive images automatically.

12 Devs of Christmas

Day 10 -

Maintaining a Better Workflow with Grunt. An article discussing both installing Grunt for first-timers and 10 tips to produce better Grunt configurations..

Net Magazine #242

Cover article -

Seven page cover article for NET magazine showing 25 ways to get more from the browser developer tools.

Creative Bloq

Online article -

Use Web Real Time Communication to control webcam and microphone streams using JavaScript APIs..

The Daily Egg

Online articles -

A series of articles on CSS3 techniques.

References

Andi is one of those rare developers that understands the ‘big picture’ - how the front-end, back-end, creative and user experience disciplines work together to produce the final deliverable, and his integration skills are highly valuable in this regard.

Den Odell, Pixel Dandy

Andi leads from the front and does not expect anyone on his team to shoulder more work than he does and this is one particular aspect of his character that has led to my enduring respect of him.

Chris McLellan, McKinsey & Company

Andi always inspired the team not only through his technical skills but more importantly his friendly personality. I am genuinely thankful to have worked with Andi, he taught me by example what great leadership is about.

Michael Pfeiffer, CSSConf.eu

Mr Andi Smith is a fucking pro.

Paul Irish, Google

As a leader Andy manages to provide direction whilst allowing his team autonomy to own projects. I thoroughly enjoyed working in Andy’s team and would recommend him as an asset to any business.

James Lelyveld, HomeTree UK

Andi’s contributions to the company and the web development community in general always went above and beyond his remit. Andi was a great manager, always listening and pushing for better projects for his team, hiring great developers and fighting difficult battles.

Gareth Truffit, The Guardian

Andi is proactive, responsible, motivated, creative, always thinking out of the box. It is a great pleasure to collaborate with such a unique individual, and I will forever appreciate the opportunity that was to work and learn from him.

Alex Falcoeiras, Time Out

I find Andrew both highly professional and skilled, always willing to put in extra effort to get a great result instead of just a satisfactory one.

Dave Hunt, Mozilla

This developer lives, eats, drinks and sleeps web, it will make you wonder where he finds the time! Unstoppable and an amazing asset to any business, and also a true friend.

Chris Ward