I’m Scott Mackenzie, a designer, developer and systems-based thinker based in Brisbane, Australia. After working as a graphic designer in a print house, a web developer at one of Australia’s earliest and most product-focused businesses, and a digital lead at studios and agencies, I started Standing By in 2009 alongside fellow creative Trent Barton. We partner with incredible people and organisations through a sustainable model that lets us become part of their team and help shape their business in ways that feel truly rewarding.

As both a designer and a developer, I’ve often felt like an imposter in each. Nevertheless, I don’t believe the two need to be mutually exclusive. I use design to communicate or facilitate an experience, and development to make it usable and tangible.

This site is a weird thing; I keep it because I strongly believe in (A) maintaining a creative habit outside day-to-day work, (B) the power of writing and (C) owning a personal site outside the networks—something that’s yours to experiment with, learn with and mess with.

These times are a weird thing; I’ve been around long enough to see the hardware we’re all addicted to take shape and the frameworks and programming languages everyone uses launch. Now I’m witnessing, in real time, a technological shift most people aren’t prepared for.

I learned PHP from a book, experimenting on Windows XP. I learned CSS when tables were still used for layout. I learned Ruby from an obscure Danish-based programmer. I read blogs daily and subscribed to RSS feeds. I had accounts on early social platforms: Flickr, Rdio and Foursquare. I learned Flash and ActionScript. I invested heavily in JavaScript frameworks like jQuery, Prototype and MooTools. I learned BEM CSS. I jumped on Meteor and MongoDB. Eventually, React appeared, then Next.js and so on.

Everything I learned manually over 20+ years is now a prompt away. On the one hand, I’m regularly in awe of what it creates. On the other hand, there is a growing void and numbness that I think we’re all slowly discovering. Right now, our studio is embracing the new tech, as we always have. We’re trying new approaches, assessing the pros and cons and basically just working it out.