Development/Design Resume

As a designer and developer for over 14 years, I offer a unique perspective, being able to traverse the entire design process from the initial design concept to the site launch.  This allows me to create design concepts that are developer friendly, but that also push the envelope in terms of development as well as design.

I enjoy creating sites with a modern look and feel, keeping it simple whenever I can. The user experience is paramount to my design and development approach, and I utilize Web 2.0 concepts like jQuery and reflective floor to enhance the user experience. I work primarily with PHP4/5 and MySQL for development and Photoshop and Illustrator CS3/4 for design.  Through the years I have picked up a little AS2/AS3 Flash, and currently I am working at a shop using .NET 3.5.  As a self-taught coder, I find that I am at an advantage when interpreting new plugins or another developer’s code.

I started coding in college, with notepad and GIMP as my early tools.  Through the years I have gone through several IDE’s including Crimson Editor, Dreamweaver, PHPed, Eclipse and NetBeans.  Currently I am rather fond of Zend Studio for its great intellisense, code refactoring and full project management tools, which make it easy to publish any web project.

I prefer to layout my websites in Photoshop CS4, as my familiarity with the tools make it a much faster process than Illustrator or other similar editors. With the 960 grid templates, and multitudes of PS Actions available online, producing a website comp has never been faster.

For the last year and a half, I have been working with WordPress, initially working with prebuilt themes and plugins, and now I am developing my own custom themes and plugins. I am currently in the process of converting this website into a custom theme designed and developed by myself, so stay tuned!

I am also very proud of the website and custom CMS I built for ATOMIC Ballroom (www.atomicballroom.com). I found that WordPress would be too cumbersome to attempt to fit everything that ATOMIC Ballroom needed, and I also wanted the challenge of creating my own custom CMS.  Built in PHP/MySQL, the ATOMIC CMS has event/class scheduling support, dynamic page generation, custom templates, all inside a handy dandy Web2.0 interface, complete with AJAX validation controls. The site is also performing very well with search engines. Page Rank has increased, qualitative SEO scoring has gone up, as well as seeing improved SERP positions.

I think the website that I am most proud of is the Official Saint Leo University website (www.saintleo.edu). I was the lead designer on the project, while working for enCircle Media (www.encirclemedia.com). A significant upgrade from the previous site, the new website is complete with web2.0 enhancements (the find it fast dropdown, and perspective student widget on the homepage), and maintains a consistent feel from page to page, something that was a top priority. Not only was the site a success in terms of the new design, but the attention to qualitative SERP values of the website was also heralded as a success.

Web design is ever changing, and I thrive on new technologies and techniques. I am a firm believer that one can never know everything there is to know about something, and I embrace this constantly evolving industry.

Click here for my traditional resume in PDF format.

Click here for my sample portfolio.