Employment
Freelance
Full-stack web development | App development
Full disclosure: my work at Blackbird takes precedence over freelance work.
2012–
Blackbird/Digital
Lead Technologist
Web development | App development | Tools & workflow development
2015–
Lachina
Interactive Designer
Web development | Software development | User interface design | Tools & workflow development | Digital publishing support | Fill-in media artist (illustration, animation, 3D modeling, video production, etc.)
2010–2015
Skills
Development
I am primarily a custom WordPress theme & plugin developer, with a focus on custom Gutenberg block development. At Blackbird, we make fully custom designed & developed WordPress sites for our clients. While I don’t have any public themes or plugins out there (yet), you can find my open-source contributions on GitHub. I also host a WordPress podcast at Blackbird called In The Loop.
I also build apps with React Native for iOS and Android. You can see some of the apps I’ve built (solo) on the app store, including Positive Peers and MobileMed.
I use HTML & CSS (usually Sass) every day, and I try to keep up with the latest features while maintaining graceful degradation. Accessibility is a priority for me from the outset.
I use JavaScript daily, sometimes with React. I also run Node.js-based workflow automation via Gulp for web projects, and I’ve written other Node scripts to automate mundane tasks.
Speaking of Gulp, check out gulp-wp, a WordPress-focused, single dependency workflow script that I developed at Blackbird for our open-source theme scaffolding.
My main server-side language is PHP, quite often paired with MySQL, but I’ve also worked with Node and MongoDB.
I use Git for all of my programming work. Check out my GitHub page for random projects and contributions to other open source projects.
I handle a lot of sysadmin-type tasks at Blackbird for Linux web servers and I deal with DNS quite often (I have been forced to learn quite a bit about email validation and deliverability). I maintain my own server at home (Ubuntu) that acts as a staging site for project websites. I am very comfortable with the command line.
I primarily use GitHub’s Atom (RIP) Microsoft’s VS Code editor for coding.
Design
I have professional experience with Adobe Creative Suite up to the latest versions, especially XD, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, AfterEffects, and the ExtendScript Toolkit.
My web design process usually involves wireframing, a few rough sketches, and then a prototype that, over several iterations, becomes the final design.
Education
Cleveland Institute
of Art
BFA in Digital Arts
Game Design emphasis
2010 Student Commencement Speaker
2006-2010