About
Updated for 2012 - Download your copy now!I am a creative director, designer and illustrator living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have been developing successful web and graphic design projects for more than fifteen years.
Presently I am designing and directing projects for startups and companies in Silicon Valley and around the world. If you're interested in working together, contact me.
History
I began my career as a news and information designer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. In 1996 I helped create the first version of Caller.com. In addition to designing web pages and writing code, I also produced daily graphics and feature illustrations for the print edition.
In 1998 I landed a web design position at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. I became Design Manager the following year and directed the user interface and visual design of Sun-Sentinel.com, as well as several other Florida-centric news and entertainment web sites owned by the Tribune Company.
I left south Florida in 2000 to join the newly-formed Tribune Interactive team in Chicago. As Lead Designer I helped define the framework and style for all of Tribune’s web sites. I also contributed to the creation of their first in-house CMS (Content Management System). In addition to my work at the Trib, I also instructed labs for new media classes at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
In 2004 I became Creative Director for Knight-Ridder Digital in San Jose, California. Similar to my work with Tribune Interactive, I was responsible for defining the layout and visual design for the entire Knight-Ridder newspaper family.
When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the gulf coast in 2005, I worked with Knight-Ridder colleagues across the country to help ensure we published before, during, and after the devastating storm. The combined print and online coverage won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism, as well as an Editor & Publisher Award for Best Special Feature.
I left Knight-Ridder in 2006 to join Topix, a small news and technology startup in nearby Palo Alto. In less than two years I helped Topix grow from an unknown news aggregator into a top ten news and community web site (comScore 2008).
In 2009 I took on a new design challenge, and helped redesign an entire suite of cutting-edge ad management and trafficking applications for BlackArrow.
In 2011 I was invited to become Principal Designer for Keepsy, a web site and mobile platform for creating books and other keepsakes from digital photos.