Links to sites and samples of work are on the left.
I have worn a lot of different hats over the years... architect, artist, graphic designer, Web designer... the common element that runs through them all is design. In all but the first I am more than less self taught, but a strong sense of design has facilitated each new transition. My work tends to run toward the clean and simple, and seeks to find a balance between aesthetics and functionality.
The vast majority of my work over the last five years was done at the Anchorage Daily News (10/99 to 9/04), where I worked first as a Graphic Designer, then moved to the Interactive Media Department in January, 2001, to head the design efforts there. Much of that work 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 Web sites. 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).
The mandate for the first version of Alaska.com was to be a statewide "geo-portal" featuring news, services and information for residents and visitors. The "new" Alaska.com is more focused on Alaska travel and tourism, is easier to navigate, is less cluttered and built with enough logic [if/then conditionals] in its templates that it can pretty much run on its own while giving the appearance of daily updates -- at the same time utilizing far fewer pieces (making updating easier when changes are necessary). I think it is also a lot better looking. This has to be my favorite page (notice the photo credits :^).
We talked about the need to redesign adn.com, the newspaper's main news site, all the while I was there, but the time and resources necessary to do it were always put off by some new priority. The site you see there now was designed since my departure, under new management. Some more recent changes have made it even better.
What I did do on adn.com was a lot of creating of special sections and special content, including seasonal sub-sites such as visitors' guides, Iditarod Sled Dog Race coverage and legistative 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 a family situation called for a 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, etc.).
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 do so. Designing with Web standards has been a priority over the last couple years, 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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