About
Lyraspace is a company started by Lee Probert in 2007 offering Interactive Media Design, Development and Consultancy services. Lee describes what he does as Interactive Media Architecture as what he does is provide a deep understanding of the design and development process as well as the means to make fantastic visions materialise into working, usable products.
Click on the Services link in the main menu to get a feel for what he can offer and for more detailed information about Lee's history over the last 20 years in the industry check out his CV.
View the Work link to view some case studies of the projects Lee has worked on recently.
Biography
Hi there. My name is Lee Probert and for nearly 20 years I've been lucky enough to have worked with some of the industries most talented people on some of the most amazing projects in the interactive media industry.
I started my career retouching digital photography and printing exhibition panels. This gave me a fantastic insight into digital imaging and I've worked with Photoshop since version two ... that was before layers! From there I found myself imaging presentation graphics to slide. In those days everyone needed their overhead projectors if they wanted that killer presentation. Before long people caught on how easy it was to present off their laptops with Powerpoint; unfortunately not everyone knew how to design their slides.
So I began my design career working with Powerpoint, Quark and illustrator but was always dipping into other programs like Corel, Aldus Pagemaker & Aldus Freehand. Before I knew it I was a dab hand with all of them and eager for more.
With the advent of CD-rom authoring the demand for rich, interactive presentations meant we had to buy a load of new kit and I had to lock myself away in the office and learn Director 4. In those days everything had to run on an 8-bit display so I had to learn all about colour, palettes and optimisation. Debabelizer was the software of choice and it was a fine art to make those early products shine. I excelled in producing cutting-edge titles mixing my talents between After-Effects and Director to blur the edges of video compositing and interface design. We produced great work over there at MagMed but the best was yet to come.
The internet blew us away and in those early days the demand for CD-rom titles was still very strong because clients still wanted those rich, vibrant experiences. Flash had just been released and with the release of Director 6 you could import SWF assets into your presentations. This meant I had to learn Flash and I jumped at the chance to get involved with this amazing, revolutionary tool.
Our initial Flash work was predominantly animation but it soon became apparent that Flash could offer us a whole lot more. We were guilty of the occasional Flash intro or three but we also produced some fantastic sites too and I was soon finding myself more and more interested in the programming of Flash and games development in general.
It was soon after that I left the Midlands to start my career in London. I worked with a company called Hypnosis back in 2000 and we did a lot of Microsite work for the music industry. I soon found that 99% of my work was Flash based and more and more of it was games or activities.
I then found myself working with Cimex and again, everything was built in Flash. This time I was mainly building e-learning games and activities. It was at Cimex that I discovered standards compliant web-design and accessibility and this is still a passionate interest and advocacy.
After Cimex I started at Ogilvy and was introduced to the world of Digital Advertising. I became an expert in banner production; studying all the different platforms and intricacies. It became apparent that banner production was a fine art and this taught me a lot about optimisation. I also built large, localised microsites and got interested in building Flash sites with complex back-end services and content-management systems. More and more my Flash work became complex and pretty soon I was authoring using Object Oriented Programming principles and following design patterns. I realised that I was indeed a coder but was lucky enough to have the designers eye as well. After producing some great work at Ogilvy and helping them move forward with their Digital department I decided to go freelance, start my own consultancy and experience as much of the digital era as I could. So, here I am.
I now develop Flash content using the Flex framework and have been involved with the Adobe team directly on the pre-release program for products like Catalyst and Flash Builder. I still like to sketch and design and have an active interest in the world of art and illustration.
I'm also starting to provide app development services using the iOS framework and am very much interested in new Mobile Web Frameworks like JQTouch and Sencha Touch. I am actively researching new Javascript tools for producing rich interactive content in the browser such as the Easel JS framework for drawing to the Canvas using a very familiar Actionscript syntax or the Impact Javascript framework for producing games in the browser without requiring a Flash plugin.
Nowadays I tend to use my skills as a designer as well as a developer in my consultancy work to advise my clients on their digital strategy. Big creative ideas need to be nurtured and respected so a technical strategy can be appropriately planned and a deep understanding and appreciation of the creative process as well as the experience and knowlodge of how best to implement these ideas is my greatest asset.
Lyraspace has a technical blog at the following URL : http://blog.lyraspace.com
and I have a personal blog for rants and more general lifestyle opinions over at http://leeprobert.com
My Google profile : http://www.google.com/profiles/leeprobert
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/leeprobert
I should not be confused with the famous football referee Lee Probert. or the rock musician Lee Probert.
If you are a Lee Probert and wish to be exonerated from this site then please get in touch.