About This Site & Myself

Biography

Despite just starting my professional career, I've been interested in and working with the web as a hobby for many years, going way back to my pre-High School days. My interest and enthusiasm for blogging lead me to A List Apart and the Web Standards community, which I embraced whole-heartedly and believe in strongly to this day.

I grew up in a small town in inland mountain town in California called Wrightwood and while surrounded by trees and wildlife I taught myself (X)HTML and CSS in between doing Math and History homework. I decided in High School that I wanted make this hobby of mine as a long term career goal. I enrolled in The Art Institute of California - Orange County in 2004, only a month after I had graduated from High School.

In the past three years I've grown leaps and bounds as a designer and expanded my interests into many different areas of web design. As a recent graduate I'm looking forward to making my stamp on the industry. While it seems like the long winding road is coming to an end, it is only just beginning.

Skills & Interests

It's always difficult to talk about my skills (and to a lesser extent my interests) because it seems an awlful like tooting my own horn. Being a person of modesty, this is incredibly awkward. However, I do think that those interested in my services need an understanding of what I can do.

I'm very well versed in writing clean, semantic (X)HTML and developing websites using CSS and best practices. I'm a believer in Dan Cederholm's philosophy of "Bulletproof" web design. That is, creating code that is adaptable and flexible to the largest extent possible. My websites are all tested against Section 508 and WCAG accessibility guidelines, and while this is always at least a partly subjective process these websites are accessible to the best of my knowledge. I'm also very interested in Usability, User Experience Design and Interaction Design.

I also have some Flash skills that can be called upon if necessary, a basic understanding of PHP and Ruby and Rails and familiarity with publishing systems like Movable Type and WordPress.

Philosophy

My philosophy towards creating for the web is a combination of several different perspectives that I attempt to keep in balance. First, and foremost, a website should be created using web standards and best practices. Comes with many benefits such as a leaner code base, easy maintenance, incredibly accessible websites with high compatibility and a good base to build more complex applications upon, among other benefits as well.

My design philosophy is something I have gleaned from authors and bloggers that I read regularly. I believe websites should be as simple as possible while retaining a respect for the great tradition of graphic design. Websites should be both beautiful and simple, without sacrificing how effective the content is communicated.

A Word On My Title

On this website you have no doubt noticed that I call myself a "Web & Interaction Designer." While a good lexicon for describing what those of us on the web actually do is hard to find, I feel this best represents my practice and philosophy. Khoi Vinh recently wrote that "on the Web, design is not a method for implementing narrative, as it is in print, but rather it’s a method for making behaviors possible." Web Design, in my view, is all about Interaction Design, which is why I've included that in my title.

Many Thanks

Being that I feel a certain part of my life has come to a a successful conclusion I feel it necessary to briefly give public thanks to those who've made it possible that I have come so far. These people, and I hope they do not mind that they are mentioned by name, are Jeffrey Zeldman, Jeff Croft, Greg Storey, Dave Shea, Khoi Vinh and Dan Cederholm (among many others). Perhaps the greatest inspiration to me as I make this my full fledged professional career is Dan Cederholm. Both the knowledge I have acquired and philosophy I have is driven by Dan's writing and work. Dan, if you happen across this page, my greatest thanks for your work.

I would also like to acknowledge the inspiration and knowledge I have gleamed from people who work on the Interaction side of thew web including Jeff Veen, Dan Saffer, Steve Krug, Jakob Neilson and Alan Cooper, among others. These are the people who I think are essential to this craft and I learn more from them each day.

There are many others whom I have not mentioned, all the wonderful authors who have contributed to A List Apart and worked with the Web Standards Project, especially. Also thanks to all my instructors at The Art Institute for their guidance and deep compassion for their students (including myself), as well as all of my peers that I have met and befriended while attending. You are all a huge part of what makes me, me. Thanks to all.

Colophon

This website is created in semantic HTML and CSS for presentation. It was designed in Adobe Photoshop and coded using the fabulous TextMate. The back end is powered by Movable Type 4, which has so far worked out swimmingly. Proudly made on Apple Computers.