Résumé

SED is simply the capital letters in my name my name, Sumarliði Einar Daðason. I work as a freelance in graphic design, drawing and programming. My professional career in this field now spans over two decades, largely independently.

Beginning

I started relatively young drawing. About seven years old, I started to draw "complex" drawings of the buildings and the aim was to become an architect. About 13 years old, I started drawing machines, cars and motorcycles that reflected the times at that age. 15 years old I started drawing comic figures and increasingly shortly after cartoons of people in Minerva, a class book for graduate-students. At about the same extent, I started drawing for advertising when something was incidental. More or less voluntary.

Technology Breakthrough

Although I have started teaching myself computer for 10 years of age (computers were rare at the time) was a little image editing and it was the remote possibility that they could draw on computers. It was just learning to program, and more often than not had one to program simple games, up from foreign magazines, just to be able to play them.

The next following years started graphical computers come on the market, but it was only possible for wealthy private companies to invest in this. But around the age of 18 I managed to invest in Intel 363 computer that had no less than 256 colors on screen - which was amazing technology at the time. At the same time I bought a manual explore that could scan 256 gray scale. It was so neat to be able to scan drawings and photos and edit them in the computer. After that there was no turning back. Since then I have made thousands of drawings and advertisings. The strategy from the age of 16 has always been to make animations, but it's easier said than done. (For a time I had internet pen-pals who worked as cartoonists at Disney and they told me it was a "poorly paid slave work", but they have not made me to loose the enthusiasm.)

Education

I'm mostly self-educated in the design, programming and graphics, but sometimes I take course here and there. More often than I have been in the front line of new technologies, especially in programming and computer use, so I often have already learned things before they are taught in universities or colleges.

I finished student of business and economics in VMA (school in Akureyri) when I was twenty and got after that a work at Pedromyndir. There I worked for about three years, mostly in editing and fixing, and scanning photos and printin. At the same time I started my studies in a private flight at Flugskóli Akureyri. After I left the Pedromyndir I started mostly working freelance graphics, design and programming.

At the same time a phenomenon called the Internet began. To connect to the Internet then you had to make a "phone-call" too a unversity in Reykjavik, called Ísmennt and the speed was very slow - probably about 1/100 of the speed of mobile phones today. HTML was also very primitive, graphics or photographs were only used on websites in need.

Internet and the computer revolution

Over the past 10-15 years, increasingly larger share of projects shifted to programming, web designing and heavy graphics’ processing (such as animation and flash). For about 10 years, this was about 10% of my working hours, but today the proportion is about 60-70%. Computer equipment is so good and powerful today that it is able to process Hollywood’s quality, with computers that do not cost millions. Internet has become fast so it does not matter where a person is working in the world.

The rapid technology development has reinforced people around the world working "freelance". In an increasingly are drawn, programmers and other professionals have begun to act as contractors for these big companies all over the world. To act as a "freelance" has its disadvantages and of course there are many risks that must be guarded against. But the benefits add up.

In additional work I designed and programmed SMALI (CMS) that has been in use by individuals, organizations, businesses and institutions around the world.