About QED
Sustainable web design,
built by one person
I’m Neil Patterson-Azzopardi, and I run QED web design. I build fast, low-carbon websites for small businesses across Devon and the UK, and I’ve been working with WordPress for over 20 years, since I built my very first site back in 2004 and my oldest client joined me in 2012.
QED is small by design. When you work with me, you work with me, not an account manager, with a trusted network of freelancers on hand when a project needs it. Most of my clients are in hospitality, or adjacent sectors, which I have vast experience in. I offer web design in South Devon and further afield, with website design packages to suit every budget, from a single page to a fully bespoke build.
The QED story
Award winning chef, blogger & website designer
My career path being founded in Hospitality, with formative training under one of the youngest chefs to achieve 2 Michelin stars, giving me the mantra of “Caution / Guests / Attention / Detail” – which stays with me today
1988
Left school, into the kitchens
I left school and went straight into hospitality. Over the years I worked my way up through professional kitchens in the UK, Ireland and Italy, cooking in Michelin-starred and 2/3-rosette restaurants, where the pressure is relentless and the standards are absolute.
Details matter
2003
A change of direction
After years of at the sharp end, working in high end kitchens had lost its shine. I went freelance; cooking privately, took temporary assignments and taking on consultancy.
2004
My first website
I built my first WordPress website, to promote freelance chefs. It was rough around the edges, but the web bug had well and truly bitten. This is where my 20+ years of WordPress experience began.
I still own the domain today
2010
The website that taught me everything
ChefHermes.com was the turning point. A Hospitality blog written about the industry from the inside by someone who’d lived it. It grew to around 11,000 unique user per month on average.
It need to be able to fund itself and WP.com is hard to monetise, so I had to teach myself about self hosting, DNS, domains and all the plumbing of the internet, the hard way. That steep learning curve became the foundation of everything I do now.
2011
First recognition
2017
Poacher turned gamekeeper
The Chef Hermes was popular, but it didn’t pay the bills. So I used nearly 30 years of industry contacts to launch my own chef recruitment company, Chef Associates. People I knew kept asking me to build them websites on the side, and QED slowly began to take shape.
2022
QED web design is born
COVID Strikes
When the pandemic closed hospitality, chef recruitment dried up, I threw myself into learning professional web design properly. What had been a side line became the main event. QED web design was born.
2023
Chef recruitment start up sold
I was dividing my time between Chef Associates & QED web design and it wasn’t fair to clients. No more hedging, the chef recruitment business was sold, and the new owners became clients.
Today
Small by design
QED is bijou by design. I want my clients to feel they have my full attention, and I can address their needs.
I build fast, low-carbon websites for small businesses across Devon and the UK, the same way I learned to cook: get the foundations right, then build & refine relentlessly.
Award-winning, evidence-led, and genuinely sustainable, not just as a badge, but as the way I work. If you are looking for the no-nonsense evidence led approach to your online presence, then we should talk
What sustainable web design means
Why I build low-carbon websites
QED started life as just a web design company. Then, not long after launching, I spent a Christmas in bed with pneumonia. There had been chatter at the time about a possible carbon tax for websites, and lying there, feeling sorry for myself, I had an epiphany: what actually is the ecological impact of a website?
Being bed-bound gave me plenty of time to find out. I went deep into how websites consume energy, what really drives their carbon footprint, and how you build them differently without sacrificing anything the client cares about. That research fundamentally changed how I work. Sustainable web design stopped being a nice idea and became the core of what QED does.
Building eco-friendly web design is my answer to that. It means building sites that do the same job, or a better one, while shifting far less data and drawing far less energy. Crucially, it isn’t about compromise. A leaner website is almost always a faster one, and a faster website converts better, ranks higher on Google, and costs less to run. Good for the planet and good for your business turn out, happily, to be exactly the same thing.
Lean code, fewer scripts
I strip out bloat and unnecessary scripts, so the browser has far less to download and process. Less code means less energy, and a faster site.
Modern image formats
Images are usually the heaviest thing on a page. Next-generation formats like WebP keep them sharp while shifting a fraction of the data.
Certified green hosting
Every site I build is hosted on certified green infrastructure, powered by sustainable energy, with a global cache so pages load quickly and efficiently from close to the visitor.
Measured, not guessed
This isn’t a badge I bolt on at the end of a project. It’s how I build from the very first line of code, the same continuous-improvement thinking, Kaizen 改善, that I carried out of the kitchen. If you want a website that’s fast, findable and genuinely treads with a lighter carbon footprint, that’s exactly what I do.
Award winning
Industry recognition
QED is frequently percieved by our peers for its work in sustainable, low-carbon web design, from that very first year to a double win at the SME News Awards in 2026.
2026
SME News Awards
Double win: Best Low-Carbon Website Design & SEO Agency, and the Sustainable Web Design Innovation Award.
2025
Tech South West Awards
Finalist in the Sustainability category.
2024
Corporate LiveWire Innovation & Excellence Awards
Voted Web Design Studio of the Year.
2024
MarTech / Innovation in Business Awards
Best Web Design Studio, Devon.
2023
Corporate LiveWire Innovation & Excellence Awards
Voted Web Design Studio of the Year.
2023
MarTech / Innovation in Business Awards
Best Web Design Studio, Devon.
2011
The Caterer Web Awards
Second prize, for my hospitality blog, ChefHermes.com, where the web journey began.
Let's build something that works
Fast, sustainable websites for small businesses across Devon and the UK. No hard sell, just an honest conversation.