I am a Web Designer and Front-End Developer based in Phoenix, AZ. Those are the titles that I like to use, but my responsibilities have included UX Design, UI Design, Graphic Design, QC/QA, Editing, Project Management, Account Management, Consulting, and handyman.
On an average day I bounce back and forth between Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, PHP Storm, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, Terminal, Sequel Pro, Git, Stack Overflow, Slack, Gmail, my sketchbook, post-it notes... you kind of get the idea.
Skycrossing is housing development in Northern Phoenix, located north of the highway 51/101 freeway interchange.
We worked directly with the marketing departments of housing developers to design and develop this website. My responsibilities we included: meeting with the clients, interpreting their recommendation to our junior designer, approving designs before client submission, and front-end development.
This was (and probably still is) the largest undertaking I’ve… undertaken. The Arizona Association of Realtors (AAR) is kind of a big deal. They may be a non-profit but their annual budget still registers in the millions.
AAR presented me with a new challenge: their user-base is much older and less technologically savvy than I am used to dealing with. They have users with Internet Explorer 6. IE8 still makes up about 6% of their monthly visits. On top of that, AAR wanted a responsive website. And on top of that we migrated their entire 3000+ page website over to a WordPress install. By hand. Well, by keyboard and mouse, but you get the idea.
We met directly with AAR leadership to work out the design of their new website. They were an active part of the discussion. This was the first project that I was lead on so it was trial by fire.
Arizona Private Education Scholarship Fund (APESF), is an Arizona based 501(c)(3) that solicits money for K-12 scholarships that it then turns around and distributes to students in need.
I lead a junior designed though the process of developing a logo, style-guide, and web-design. After that I coded the front-end of this website and worked with other developers to make the UX of the application and donation process best-in-class.
Fetch! Pet Care is a pet services provider that operates on a franchised model.
Challenges
Phoenix Urban Guide started off as a directory of the arts for Downtown Phoenix. In the years since it has become much much more.
Artlink is one of the oldest 501-C-3 non-profits in Downtown Phoenix. These are the minds originally behind the First Friday artwalk that has become a cultural staple of Phoenix. This year also marks the 26th year of Art Detour, Artlink’s premier annual Arts and Culture event.
Artlink came to us with a simple request, make them look legitimate. They were running their site off of a wordpress.com domain. They had an off-the-shelf theme. Their site lacked polish and consistency.
What we did was transfer their site to an actual domain (Which they already owned but were not using), revamped their theme, and made them look like the standout organization that they are. This year their site is getting a few more updates, such as responsive design and updated forms for Art Detour signups.
Downtown Phoenix Journal (DPJ) is the best source for people go to find out what’s going on in Downtown Phoenix. It’s written by Downtown advocates and residents and directed towards downtown residents and visitors that want to see the “real” downtown.
DPJ cam to Invexi 2 years ago wanting a complete redesign of their site. At that point that was the largest undertaking that we’d ever taken on. DPJ has literally thousands of posts. And that doesn’t include their wiki, the “Live Here” section (which contains an up to date MLS system), and the various Author and Category archives.
We updated DPJ to a modern design focusing more on images. The design holds up well even 2 years later. We’ll be making some more updates to this site as the year goes on as they move to stay ahead of the curve.
We also moved to monetize their site. Rather than use adsense to pull in random ads DPJ wanted a system where they would sell ads on their own so that they could control the content, design and type of the ads.
No I did not develop this site, but I do have some cool things on here so you should check out My Profile.