I am a seasoned "hands-on" Art Director and User Experience Designer with over 10 years of experience crafting high impact, highly visual, engaging experiences for screen-based media. Although my background and core strengths are in graphic design and visual communication, I also have interests, knowledge and experience in Interaction Design, Animation, Programming, and user-centered design and research.

Graphic Design

I have been an artist and visual thinker for as long as I can remember. Professionally, I studied Graphic Design and am well versed in the art of typography, color, space and negative space, line and form.

I am also quite comfortable with a pencil or brush in hand, and create Generative Art as well.

Visual Communication

I have the intuitive and professional knowledge to create visually emotive, suggestive, and informative experiences that connect and resonate with the human subjective condition.

Interaction Design

Earlier in my career I was primarily interested in designing web/software interactions that were innovative and unexpected. Now, with a few more years under my belt, I still strive to create fun and interesting user interfaces, but temper that with an equally strong desire to create usable, enjoyable and intuitive experiences.

Programming & Development

I do not believe that one has to choose one "side" of their brain over the other, but rather the two working together allow a broader creative approach. In tandem with my design work, I have been writing clean, innovative, professional Object-Oriented ActionScript for 7 or 8 years now. XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and XML are also technical tools in my box.

Teaching & Mentoring

For the past 4 years I have been teaching Interactive Design and Flash ActionScript classes at the Art Institute of Seattle. I attempt to help my students marry their creative and technical skills, and not consider the two to be mutually exclusive. I also mentor select students. Although I'm currently on a temporary hiatus from teaching so I can focus more on my family, I will certainly be back in the classroom soon.

Animation & State Transitions

There is a subtle art to transition animations. Animating movement from state-to-state or mode-to-mode in a software system isn't always necessary or welcome, but when it is, (and it's done well) it can improve a user's experience dramatically by adding affordance, consistency and clues as to navigation and load time requirements. Working for years in Flash has taught me about how to use the opportunity of state change animations to the benefit of the software experience. As CPU/GPU performance continues it's exponential path of power increase, I believe state transitions will become the norm in most systems.

Sound Design

I find the incorporation of sound into rich software experiences can add affordances or enrich and support visual affordance to interactions if done well. Not a professional skill of mine, but having been involved with amateur electronic music production for many years has taught me much about the core concepts of audio engineering.

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Business

Having spent 6 years running my own freelance practice and standing in front of crowds speaking and teaching has taught me how to think on my feet, communicate clearly, and interact with people of varying personality, seniority, and influence. I've also developed an understanding of business process and strategy and how they relate and contrast to the design process.