Welcome

"My name is Julia Hickson and I'm a graphic designer for North East Lincolnshire Council. The side I enjoy about designing is starting it from scratch, seeing it in your head to developing it through from screen to printed matter. It's nice to know that it's you who thought of it and designed it and created it.

My favourite subject was art, I drew all the time at home, but didn't know, obviously when you're young, that could take you into a career, and it was probably the only subject I enjoyed really at school.

Well my mum currently is a dance teacher, when I was younger that's all I wanted to do, to be a dance teacher, but at school dancing then, wasn't encouraged as a career. So I was encouraged to go Art College, where I did a first diploma and from there I went to specialise in graphic design and got on a course in York and did two years there. By the end of the two years I'd had enough of being a student and wanted to start working. The first couple of years it was hard to find a job that was stable, the first three jobs were like three months, eight months and then 10 months. Then my next job after that was like two and a half years and the next one after that was eight years, the longer you're with it the better it seems to get.

I've always been somebody that wanted to be at home, I'm a homebody, that's just me.  I didn't want to go to the big city, I didn't want to go London, I didn't want to go to Manchester. I wanted to be at home and I wanted to be near my family but I wanted to be able to do the career which I trained myself to do, which I think I have achieved."