Web
Here's a bundle of sites I worked on that are still live. I helped these orgs express their brand and message on the medium of the web.
Red Hat projects
I worked closely with content strategists and collaborated with a larger UX team on these projects.
Timeline: about 2 quarters. Design tool: adobe XD, figma. CMS: drupal
UX lead for redesign of the product band on the Red Hat homepage.
UX lead for redesign of the product nav dropdown. This was a reaction to low engagement to the 50 products that used to be featured here. Thew new version directs folks to the "All products page" instead. It's touted as a success in simplifying.
UX lead for redesign of the Red Hat's resource page templates. New features: table of contents, breadcrumbs, clickable footnote, ability for content to break out of main container, 4 sidebar card options, consistency to hundreds of collateral material, and SEO value to previously PDF-only content.
Sites for small, local orgs
Designed and built directly with clients as a side-gig.
Timeline: 2 months. Design tool: sketch, adobe XD. CMS: wordpress, squarespace
Brand and site for affordable homes and community space in Underhill, VT
Brand and site for woodworking business in Upstate NY offering custom furniture, crafts and classes. Site features: ecommerce.
Dispensary in Western Mass. Together with CannaPlanners
Launched 10 years ago and still going strong. What started as the side-project of a cabinetmaker turned into a full-time gig when the site produced steady work. Site features: highly iterated form intake process.
Sites for contractors
I was the first designer for an agency dedicated to medium-sized contracting businesses. Each site had a similar organization, yet allowed for a surprising amount of customization. This was our edge. I was able to get my more bespoke ideas accepted by developers by sharing a prepared plan for building it early on.
Timeline: 2 weeks. Design tool: adobe XD. CMS: ModX
Charter invested in branding and it shows. Commitment to the direction of the brand is what makes this site successful. Our story was anchored in a nautical theme, and we used supporting metaphors and imagery.
The challenge: design a site with a heart logo without feeling "soft." The solution was to lean into the red color through a dark-mode lens. Going light with red gets you pink. The resulting palette was a variety of greys with a red highlight. The darkness and angles bring a sturdiness to the site.
The Iron Range mountains were an important to the client. I introduced a new typographic element as well as local imagery to speak to that. I expanded the capabilities of their once text-only brand.
Professional photographs wildly elevate the site’s impact. The color repetition, angle, and video in the hero are the icing on the cake.
One constraint at the agency was solely using google fonts. Here, I sneak in a graphic of script font that aligns with their logo. Additional items I contributed to the brand were the shield icon, sparkle-stars, sunburst, and stripes.
We don’t see many serif fonts in this industry, so this was a bit of a novelty. View the site to see animations like the truck, text, and flag sliding in.
This was an instance of designing a style guide and website from only photos of trucks. So I matched the colors, redrew the graphics, and added new supporting elements. Marketing strategy including copy-writing was a part of the job too. Questions would come up such as deciding what actually sets this company apart. Strategy is sometimes storytelling.
Great branding is not just a logo, but a toolbox of aligned design elements. This client came to us with a heavy toolbox. We employed these themes: wavy-line separators, sunbursts, subtle textures, a mascot in color and monotone, and a cursive font.
This commercial client was treated differently than our more common residential owners. We limited content on the homepage, focused more on imagery, and focused the strategy more on case-studies.
I added depth to this italicized Helvetica logo through stock photos, background patterns, a welcoming palette, and bright button colors.
Good on ya for making it all the way down here. Send me a note if you'd like a site, or check out the branding and research examples.