User Experience (UX) Designer | User Interface (UI) Designer | Graphic Designer | Web Designer | Front-End Developer

Thank you for visiting my website. I’d like to share with you a little bit about myself. For as long as I can remember, I have always enjoyed creativity, and the things that weren’t stale and cookie cutter. I was always drawing pictures and creating artwork when I little. By the time I entered college at The Art Institute of Washington, I had to resolve my creativity with real world practicality. I began to see drawing and art were only a basis of something else I wanted to be involved in. The world around us, society, culture, national identity, the branding of businesses, and so much more didn’t just happen. They were thoughtfully planned. They were designed.

Design, especially as a profession is about influence. Clients and employers often talk about their goals, enthusiastically wanting to exercise that influence. When it’s done properly it achieves it’s goal of driving thoughts, feelings and actions leaving those subject to it with a feeling of satisfaction feeling that the experience was for them alone.  When design is blatant or overt, it can at worst be considered insulting. People don’t like to be explicitly told what to do but the design must subtly suggest. People generally don’t like to feel like their choices are limited, so the design must be as a guide elaborating greatly upon focused options for thoughtful consideration.

The exciting part of design, whether it be web, graphic, or print, is that it has such an incredible presence just waiting to shape and be shaped. Entertainment, politics, expression and preservation of culture all depend on carefully crafted design. Often times I have discussions with people who have ideas but can’t quite express them. I enjoy lending my experience and creativity to them through intentional layout, color, typography, and other key design decisions. Interactively, I enjoy designing the user experience.

Personally, I enjoy drawing, composing music, reading, investing in stocks, keeping up with new trends & technology as well as a host of other varying things.

This portfolio is to demonstrate my expertise in modern Web Design. The internet and technology are increasingly evolving. This means that when new technology and expectations arise, veterans of the industry can not rest on their work of years past. Nor can newcomers simply expect to previous works. While there are essential lessons of previous design trends to be learned, one must be currently and consistently engaged if they want to maintain their edge. I have been engaged consistently since 2008 in both web design and development. I have been involved in web marketing and e-commerce for small businesses, major hospitality clients, and non profit organizations. I invite you to examine my work and share any feedback you have. I sincerely thank you for visiting.

A Focus on User Experience (UX)-

When I notice someone has just completed an online order, signed up to a website, or made an online reservation. I will generally ask “How did the experience feel?” While it is something that the common user will experience, they may not know hot to fully express it other than to respond “It was good”, “I didn’t think about it”, which is also pretty good. Or “It was hard to understand”, which is of course what a webmaster does not want to hear. I am very interested and exciting to learn from everyday users and translate their feedback into actionable information. A good user experience, doesn’t just happen. It is designed, intentionally and thoughtfully. The path, flow and options are carefully crafted to anticipate user actions to effortlessly guide them toward the goal of conversion without encumbering them or making them feel coerced. This involves taking into account user habits, preferred browsing devices, and using the latest available technology to welcome users in to enthusiastically choose participation.

Enhancing the user interface (UI)-

Implementing a clean and intuitive user interface is very tightly related to creating an incredibly pleasing user experience. It is important to feel what the user feels. On a mobile phone a user does not want to feel frustrated trying to aim their fingers at buttons sized for the precision of a mouse. Similarly, unreasonably large buttons on a desktop screen will come across a potentially wasted space. Finding the balance, and tailoring it to the desired outcome is of utmost importance.

Responsive Web Design (RWD)-

The internet of the late 90’s presented designers the challenge of how to create a good web experience for users visiting from different web browsers. Today’s challenges are far greater in that modern designers are tasked with bringing a unified and consistent user experience across an increasingly varying number of screen sizes, resolutions, DPIs, mobile devices, in addition to multiple browsers. I find this challenge to be extremely exciting, and satisfying when met with a successful solution that knocks down the aforementioned roadblocks to a consistently succinct experience that also lends itself greatly to a search engine optimized (SEO) website. After all, what is a great website if it can’t be found? Responsive web design will prevent your website from being punished in the Google search engine rankings for having a separate m.mobile website or t.tablet website.