About – Dave Acton

About me

Dave Acton is a UI/UX and product designer

My passion is to create visually appealing and functional websites, applications, products and experiences with intuitive and user-centred design and if I can do this while invoking a sense of joy and delight, then I am a very happy designer.

My journey in design began at a young age, when I taught myself how to use software like Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop at the age of 13 or 14. With these skills, I started designing posters, websites, and logos online, using my website "Dave's Designs" as my personal portfolio. This website was prominently featured on search engines like Altavista (wow, that really shows my age doesn't it 😉), which gave me a lot of exposure and helped me to build a reputation as a young designer. I loved waking up to emails from bands, small companies and webmasters (as we used to call them back in 1996!) with requests to design their logos, branding and websites. I’m not sure they knew I was a 14 year old kid in Australia, but they were usually pretty happy, because I did it for free! Well, I loved it, and lived at home with my parents, so that wasn’t at all an issue.

I've worked with Shorthand, ACF (Australian Conservation Foundation), Xpon, Holoscribe, Amnesty International, Informa [📈IFPJ.F], Streamly, Toyota, PharmaData, Mylan Pharmaceuticals (Now Viatris [📈VTRS] via a merger with Pfizer), The Pharmacy Guild of Australia, BBC, BBC Learning English, The Guardian, Sony (Destiny 2), Mirror, Big Brother (Endemol), Practical Publishing, CraftWorld, BAFTA (British Academy Film Awards), a collaboration with Virgin Media, EA Sports (FIFA18), AIA Spurs, The Global Mail, Ocean Health Systems, Queensland Health and Australian universities such as UQ (University of Queensland), CYSAR (National Centre For Youth Substance Use Research), QUT IHBI (Institute for Health and Biomedical Innovation, Queensland University of Technology) now The QUT DesignLab, and UniSC’s Virtual Open Days (University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia). I’ve also co-founded startups such as Tonic and the NFT project, Game of Cities.

More recently I have had the privilege to devote design time to not-for-profit projects such as Amnesty Decoders (A crowd-sourced, micro-tasking platform by Amnesty International) and long form human rights related digital reports such Tear Gas: An Investigation, which won a Webby award for its exploration of the use and abuse of tear gas. I have also recently assisted ACF (The Australian Conversation Foundation) in designing and developing a micro-tasking platform to identify wrongful clearing of protected areas, which may be contributing to climate change and destruction of habitat. I am passionate about creating user-centered designs that not only improve the user experience but also make a positive impact on society.

Education

Commercial Arts Training College - 2005

UXDMC (UX Design Masterclass) - 2021

SuperHi - 2022

Photography

In addition to design I also enjoy photography. I've included a collection of some of my favourite travel photos from trips to Indonesia, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands and Hungary.

Services

User experience
User interface
Product design
Web design
Brand identity
Print design

Tools

Figma
Sketch
Miro
Jira
Notion
Photoshop

Clients

ACF
Holoscribe
Amnesty
Tonic
PharmaData
Shorthand
The Global Mail

Contact

Email: dave at dacton.com
Twitter: @dactondesign