Design in the gift

Hi! I'm Vermont-based designer experimenting with working in the gift economy.

Wes smiling on a mountain-top with tiny people in the background.

My career has focused on bringing value through design. Making fuzzy concepts coherent. For 15ish years, I’ve helped hundreds of smallish organizations organize their chaos. Now I’m at the enterprise scale with Red Hat .

My interest in the gift stems from a desire to challenge the conventional business-as-usual practices, with a model that emphasizes reciprocity over receipts. Trust over contracts. I envision a world where more aspects of life are free from the grip of money.

I enjoy seeing the blending on and offline pursuits. Permaculture aligns surprisingly well to design work. Observing-before-doing. Practicing thrift. Thinking holistically. The local ecosystem of my 1-acre yard continues to teach me about cooperation in the digital landscape.

Work samples

🌳 Web design

Check out 17 online presences I spruced up. For personal projects, I code and design them; otherwise, it’s collaborating with devs.

✂️ Research

Orchards require pruning. Websites require maintenance. Read a few examples of user research I contributed to.

Work status

Currently

Red Hat: Sr. UX designer specializing in hairy, system-based projects on redhat.com like navigation. Also, ux research and ops.

Before that

iMarket Solutions: 1st designer at Vermont startup. Designed 200+ sites for HVAC & plumbing companies. Spearheaded design ops and research initiatives.

Way before that

Brady People ID: Where I cut my teeth in typography, color, layout, and print.
Fidelity: Where I leaped from print to the web design & dev.
⚔️ Freelance: Where I dove deep into web work with agencies and clients directly.

Previous, local collabs: AALV (Association of Africans Living in Vermont), Pine Island Community Farm: A Farm for New Americans, Green-up Vermont, Burlington’s Code for America brigade.

Lists of note

Cultural inputs

John Steinbeck | Andy Shauf | Wendell Berry | Joe Sacco | Charles Eisenstein | David Wain | Neville Goddard | Jeffery Lewis | Studio Ghibli | Whitney | Protomartyr | Please dont destroy | David Graeber

Edible perennials in my yard

Aronia | Apple | Beach plum | Blueberry | Cherry | Cranberry bush| Currant | Gooseberry | Elderberry | Native plum | Pawpaw | Ramps | Raspberries | Rhubarb | Sun chokes | Winterberry | Witch hazel

Web homages to books

Radical comics library | Wobblies graphic novel: timeline | A People’s History of the US: CSS book cover | Be Here Now: CSS book cover.