The people working here are smart, savvy, multi-skilled and highly inventive individuals. We share a common goal to create great communication experiences that help our clients succeed and are fit for our times. Read some of the biographies below or get in touch if this seems like the team you want to join.
Sean O’Halloran
Managing Director
Sean is a passionate advocate of integrated communications and user centred thinking and advises a number of senior clients on ways to develop successful business and communication strategies in a shifting media landscape.
Originally an artist working in the UK and abroad, Sean started Hoop in 1996 with Paul Nunneley. Since then he has also helped start a number of high growth businesses and held non exec directorships in a variety of sectors.
Paul Nunneley
Director and online strategy consultant
Paul leads our thinking on usability and user experience. With a hands on approach, he is helping to transform not just our own approach, but also the online presence of some of the UK’s most high profile brands.
A founder of Hoop with Sean O’Halloran in 1996, Paul is an active entrepreneur prepared to put his money where his beliefs are. He has held a number of non exec directorships with high growth start-ups and advises a number of senior Hoop clients on developing authentic, successful online brands.
Marian Forkin
Operations Director
Marian coordinates all studio traffic and manages relationships with our broad network of suppliers and collaborators. A superb communicator of boundless drive she enjoys excellent relations with staff and clients alike, managing key accounts with major clients.
Before joining Hoop Marian spent eight years in a senior communications position in the public sector, leading her team to numerous awards and widely recognised benchmarking standards of performance. She has been a board director at Hoop since 2002.
David Caines
Creative Director
David is responsible for creative standards at Hoop. He spearheads a multi-disciplined team that fuses strategy, design and writing and delivers great brand experiences in print and online.
More than 15 years at the top of his game have given David the surety of hand and calmness of approach that brings out the best in those around him and causes delight in the clients he works with. An acute intelligence and broad interests that take in literature, film, architecture, art and music, he has a very wide field of reference from which to draw in pursuit of innovation.
Jane Tobitt
Senior Designer
Being able to innovate and add value in both design for print and web design, Jane epitomises the emerging breed of integrated creative. She has picked up D&AD and Heist awards for her brand communications and is winning many plaudits for her elegant and highly usable web sites too.
Russell Weighton
Senior Consultant, tone of voice and SEO
Russell makes a broad and invaluable contribution across our strategic and creative output and leads our thinking on how words make brands come alive. His incisive wit and intelligence are in high demand across our client base, where his versatility sees him creating advising on copy strategy, tone of voice or writing content for websites in a way that improves their search engine rankings.
An objective and insightful thinker, Russell’s judgement is trusted by clients across Hoop.
Joseph Ortenzi
Technical Director
Joseph works across the entire web development cycle, from research, ideas and strategy through design and development to deployment, testing and metrics. A champion of User Centred Design and Web Standards, he is helping prove the case to clients that good usability and standards compliance is just good business. He makes sure the technology deployed is always the right one.
Joseph is instrumental in dispelling a client’s fear of technology by providing a human centred, best fit solution to each of the challenges we work on. He sits between the developers and the technology that enables us to great user experiences, ensuring the we have in place the technical capability to deliver on the creative vision.
Lynne Dyer
Project Manager
Lynne gets it done. No fuss, no funny business. Educated in Fiji and New Zealand Lynne holds a Bachelor of Communication Studies from Auckland University. She has extensive experience delivering projects in many sectors including, pharmaceutical, paper, retail and transport & tourism and local government.
As a Project Manager at Hoop she has brought new skills and energy to the table and made a significant impact on how we do business. Her warmth, guile and good humour have also added a new dimension to the ways in which we delight our clients.
Chris Solomons
Senior Artworker
Chris had an old school apprenticeship working his way up from a junior studio hand as a school leaver. Preceding the advent of computers, Chris has an encyclopedic knowledge of traditional techniques of typography that few possess.
Transferring this detailed approach to the digital environment, he is able to trouble-shoot technical aspects of print and publishing that some of us can only wonder at. These skills are also finding a new outlet in web design where his technical expertise and eye for detail are fast becoming a valuable resource for clients and colleagues alike.
Jon Wearne
Designer
Jon is fast becoming a highly valuable hybrid designer with solid brand and print expertise coupled with a growing portfolio of web based projects.
In high demand as much for his versatility and easy going nature, Jon is first port of call for a number clients that have come to rely on his vision for their communications.
Chris Raettig
Senior Developer
The best developers are those that make technology simple. Chris is that rare breed of person whose fierce intellect and gentle demeanor make him both a brilliant technologist and excellent communicator.
Passionate in his belief that the web is about people not technology, and committed to open source, Chris is leading us into a new era of usability and helping major clients like PepsiCo and Grosvenor benefit from his insight.
Richard Willis
Web Developer
Richard joined us hot off the plane from his native South Africa. For him, and particularly for us, it was a case of right place, right time.
For one of such tender years he possesses an extraordinary gift of understanding user needs and being able to develop elegant code to meet them. Alongside Chris he is developing a new generation of Content Management System that we are sure is unique in the market.
Kathrin Anderl
Senior Designer
A German, of Spanish descent, Kathrin spent many years working in Luxembourg before coming to London. Clients benefit from her cosmopolitan approach and experience in delivering new identities for major UK and European organisations
Focusing predominantly on design for print, she is our lead designer for accounts with the Royal Academy of Art, NPIA and Notting Hill Housing.
Mohammed Rahman
Web Developer
Joining us after four years at the pointy end of web development, Mohammed is a mathematician at heart, and a self taught technologist by trade.
Equally at home at the front or back end, he adds strength in depth to the tech squad, delivering great User Experiences for the growing Hoop client base.
Beyond these walls
We’re developing a network of carefully selected collaborators with the expertise our clients need. This isn’t teleworking, this is networked intelligence and it’s the future of a knowledge based economy. Some of the people we’re working with:
Online PR
Sara Bourdan and Laura Rhode.
User Experience Design
Guy Burden
SEO and analytics
Lucy Conlan
Writing content
Gerald Forkin and Matthew Grenier
Enterprise Social Computing
Anu Gupta.