About Me
Name: Alvaro Ojeda (aka Alfie)
Online Monicker: Digital*CHET
Birthday: March 13
Age: 32
Location: Canberra, Australia
Nationality: Australian of Chilean origin
What I Do
I’m a Graphic & Web Designer by profession, currently employed by Intelledox Pty Ltd.
Background
I’ve been into creative design and the arts since I can remember. I remember hanging out with my mum watching her draw stuff, mostly faces and hands, and thinking “Wow, that’s so cool! I’m gonna do that when I grow up!”. Then when I was about 11 my older brother was studying Graphic Design and would bring drawings and sketch books home, and I would flip through them and be amazed at the designs and creativity. Since then, my passion for Design has flourished and taken on a life of its own. During my schooling years I excelled at the Arts and Design classes and was often called upon to display works for school exhibitions and functions. During college, I entered a number of design competitions and managed to win some awards for my designs.
After college I took up working full-time and my design work took a back seat for a while. I still tried to keep busy designing websites, logos, and other designs as my spare time allowed.
Sometime in 1998-99, I came across a piece of software called WindowBlinds, an application that dresses up the Windows interface with “skins”. My interest in desktop customization developed into a hobby and that got me started on a whole new type of design: interface design.
Tools of my Trade
(Listed in order by percentage of use)
Graphic Design
- Adobe CS3 Web Premium Bundle
- Fireworks - I’m a big fan of this application. It brings together the best of both vector and raster worlds and puts it all together in one neat, quick-to-manipulate and easy-to-use package.
- Photoshop - When work requires a more refined and detailed approach, I turn to this industry workhorse. Beyond mere photo editing, this extremely powerful application allows me to create quality artwork with little fuss.
- Illustrator - Another staple of the Graphic Design industry. Illustrator allows for sharp lines and scalable artwork in industry-standard formats.
- Dreamweaver - The workhorse powerhouse of web design. Dreamweaver is definitely the tool for serious web designers. I find myself using it sparingly these days, as I find it somewhat clunky because of its feature set..
- Flash - I don’t use this little beast as much as I’d like to, but lately I’ve been taking more of an interest in it and coming up with some cool work.
- Acrobat - Great for creating and editing PDF documents.
- Notepad++ - This little beauty is quick and powerful and has a number of plugins that make working with it a breeze and a pleasure. If you’re into coding and want an efficient, yet powerful tool, I highly recommend trying it out.
Skinning & Customizing
- SkinStudio 6
- WindowBlinds 6
- CursorFX
- IconDeveloper
- IconPackager
- ObjectDock+
Hardware
- Dell Inspiron 9400 Notebook
- Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T2600 @ 2.16MHz
- 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 667MHz
- 17” UltraSharpâ„¢ Widescreen UXGA Display with TrueLifeâ„¢ (1920x1200)
- 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 7800
- 100GB Hard Drive
- Windows XP Professional (SP3)
- 500GB LaCie External Drive
- 1TB LaCie Desktop Drive
- Casio Exilim EX-Z1200 Digital Camera

