I have worn a lot of different hats over the years ... architect, artist, graphic designer, web designer, image editor and editorial artist ... a strong sense of design, creativity, technical skills, attention to detail and the desire to learn have facilitated each new transition. My latest endeavor has been to add motion graphics to my repertoire. My work tends to run toward the clean and simple, and seeks to find a balance between aesthetics and functionality.
Most recently I worked at Grist.org (Dec 05 - Aug 09), an award-winning environmental news site. My stint at Grist was accompanied by a strong conviction that the work that they are doing is important, a pleasure that we don't often get in professional life. My time there also allowed me to explore another aspect of my creativity ... because Grist brands its offering as "Gloom and doom with a sense of humor®", my projects often reflected a sense of lightness and irony. Occasionally I had the honor of seeing my work picked up and republished in other publications. Please browse through some samples (click on an image or use the arrows below to advance).
While at Grist I worked closely with the editorial and production teams (in official capacities with both), creating and/or editing images to illustrate articles, columns and news. I designed art to brand special series, created multimedia slideshows, designed layouts for email newsletters and fundraising campaigns. I was involved in refreshing an aged site design, keeping it fresh and adding flexibility while a new site was being developed, then worked with developers and managers to fix many of the problems that come with a new site design and deployment. Additionally, I designed print materials when needed, ranging from event posters and booth graphics to brochures and magazine ads.
Some favorites from my work at Grist ... [1] [2] [3]
The majority of my work over the previous five years was done at the Anchorage Daily News (10/99 to 9/04), employment I left so that my family could have time with a terminally ill parent. I first worked at ADN as a Graphic Designer, then moved to the Interactive Media Department in January, 2001, to head the design efforts there. Much of that effort would be on Alaska.com, a domain acquired by the newspaper as I was coming into the department that we would build and grow into one of the state's largest websites. Two years and a department management change later I would have the opportunity to design and build Alaska.com all over again from the ground up (archived here), picking up a number of Alaska Press Club awards along the way.
At adn.com I created special sections and special content, including seasonal sub-sites such as visitors' guides, Iditarod Sled Dog Race coverage and legislative and elections sections. During my last six months there, my duties changed as I was asked to assume the role of Online Editor. It was an interesting change that I enjoyed until our relocation. I was responsible for managing the content on the site, overseeing the publishing clerks and an intern, providing guidance to those who had been given some of my old duties and still doing a fair amount of design and content creation (slide shows, video editing, etc.). A high point of my time in the ADN newsroom was being a co-recipient of a McClatchy Company President's Award for my multimedia contributions to the April 18, 2004, story "58 seconds to death" as reported by Lisa Demer.
Between full time work and family life there is not a whole lot of extra time, but I have managed to design and build a number of freelance sites and continue to take on projects. Designing with Web standards is a priority, utilizing XHTML and CSS to create tableless layouts that isolate content from structure and make for easier updates and future changes. This is still exciting stuff.
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