Jonathan Joyce

JONATHAN Joyce, who has died in a swimming accident aged 41, was a digital entrepeneur who was passionate about the worldwide web and wild swimming. In 2001, JJ, as he was widely known, co-founded the award-winning company Storm ID Ltd which creates websites and applications for clients including Marks & Spencer, Holiday Inn, ITV, Disney, Mars, the Beano, the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and the city of Glasgow.

As technical director of Storm ID and a creative influence in its sister company Storm Ideas, both based in the Corn Exchange in Leith, he was hugely influential in creating Twibbon (with the slogan "Make Something Happen") which won the inaugural Golden Twits award for Best Applications in 2009. Twibbon is now used by millions of twitterers around the world -- charities, anti-government protesters or simply the previously-unheard. He also helped take Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace off the written page and took them on to the web.

He was nominally a technical dude but his creativity shone through. Working 24/7, he and his colleagues at Storm ID probably kept their local takeaways in Leith in business after the economic crisis hit. He also played a major role in helping Glasgow City Council's Marketing Bureau with its digital initiative. Storm ID were behind the website www.whatmakesglasgowgreat.co.uk, which has been a great marketing success for the city.

If life at Storm ID ever got boring, which, according to JJ it never did, he challenged the elements. Extreme swimming became his passion – he called it wild swimming – involving waters where there was no shallow end. According to his colleagues at Storm ID, "we used to call JJ the missing link with our aquatic ape ancestors. He'd throw himself into any water deeper than a puddle." He was a passionate supporter of what is now the UK-wide Outdoor Swimming Society and he created the website www.wildswim.com, which maps areas around the UK where you can swim without that annoying person splashing you from the adjacent lane. He died while swimming off one of his favourite places, Beesands beach in South Devon. Whether he died in the water, en route to or in the Derriford hospital in Plymouth is not known.

He was born in Isleworth, near Twickenham in west London, to Peter and Denise Joyce, natives of Cumberland whose work had taken them south. He attended Hampton School, also near Twickenham, followed by Halliford independent school in Shepperton, on a bend of the river Thames in Surrey, where he became head boy, captained the rugby team and taught himself Spanish in the back of French class.

He excelled at maths, at the age of six telling his friends "my hobby is numbers", but, fearing pure maths would be too difficult to major in, enrolled at the University of Bristol as a student of chemistry and philosophy. After a gap year studying maths, in French, at the Pierre-and-Marie Curie University in Paris, he returned to Bristol and switched to Pure Mathematics, graduating with a BSc. "I handed in my paper 30 minutes earlier and left knowing I had a First," he recalled.

Moving north, he got an MSc in Cognitive Science at the University of Edinburgh, where he met his great love, Stephanie Simon, and pursued an interest in astronomy.

After a "frugal" spell in Ireland, where Stephanie taught German in a convent school while he developed his computer software skills, the couple returned to Edinburgh where he got a job helping an ad agency move into the internet age. Seeking a job that would better use his skills, he was interviewed by a kindred spirit, Simon Wall, and together with another couple of like-minded friends, Paul McGinness and Craig Turpie, founded Storm ID.

Using the benefits of internet communication, while JJ continued to work for Storm ID, he and Steph moved first to Sweden and later to Ashburton in Devon, where they both developed their interest in wild swimming. He was swimming off Beesands beach near Kingsbridge, Devon, when he got into difficulties. Seeing him struggle to stay afloat, a nearby kayaker got him back to shore and he was airlifted to a Plymouth hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

His colleagues at Storm ID wrote: "Jonathan lived life to the full. He taught us a few important things: fill your life with love, surround yourself with laughter and seize every opportunity like there's no tomorrow."

He is survived by Steph, sons Janus and Finn, his sister Lisa, niece Esme and his parents Peter and Denise.