Alison grew up in Lanarkshire near Glasgow and studied Textile Design at Glasgow School of Art. After graduating, Alison moved to London where she did a variety of jobs including selling books for Waterstones and designing rugs for Habitat. Alison then went back to university to study design for interactive media and co-founded a successful interactive media company based in Shoreditch. When the company was sold to an FT500 company, Alison moved back to Scotland with her family. Alison now mainly works as an illustrator and author of picture books, but still dabbles with interactive media and web design.