Remember those cut-away diagrams of Earth from your high-school textbook, showing the different layers? That’s how I like to visualize the different layers of web-development. Ideas come in like sunlight and feed a beautiful outer layer which has a roots in a system connected to, but hidden from, the surface. Further down, the deeper layers hold it all together. We usually divide these layers just below the surface -- one team handles the “look and feel” and the other makes it work. With this approach, its very hard not to end up with something like a tree with no roots -- something that looks good but doesn’t work. Or something like an underground city -- efficient and effective, but hidden and unappreciated.

I specialize in bridging this divide. I can take you all the way from the first sunrise of your ideas down into a firm foundation that works hand-in-hand with the design that your users will see. And I know what the guys working farther below the surface need, so I can talk to them and make sure that the whole thing works well.

In practical terms, this means that I can create compelling visual and verbal content, integrate it into fresh, appropriate designs, implement it in XHTML, CSS, Javascript/jQuery, Flash, and PHP, and administer systems such as Joomla, Drupal, or MODx to serve it to your users.

If you’ve had the misfortune of working with a designer who wouldn’t speak to your techs, then I’m also willing and able to debug and reconfigure existing systems.

More interested in design than implementation? Have a print-based project? Please see my design portfolio for more.

I handle front-end configuration, markup, code, and some design at raSANTIAGO + Associates in Portland, Oregon on a regular, part-time basis. We specialize in meeting the needs of non-profits and socially responsible small businesses with open-source solutions, especially when those needs change quickly. A small office capable of big jobs, raSA is a place where flexibility, quick thinking, responsibility, adaptability are absolutely necessary.

We needed a quick facelift to our site due, in part, to all the new attention civiSERVER.com was garnering for our company. As always, time and money were tight, so it was important to create a solution which could grow and adapt without having to be redone one more time. I developed a flexible tagging system within ModX, allowing us to easily categorize and reuse content. In addition to consulting on and creating copy, I also provided all the new photography and an updated set of color choices. Pressing client projects have taken precedence over implementing the final stages of this site, but its structure is adaptable enough that it can be presented in its current state until time allows for additions.

I provided a complete start-to-finish solution for our company’s new offering, civiSERVER. Consulting with the boss, I helped develop branding and color choices which related to our established identity. I created and consulted on all copy and content, prepared all images, and implemented the final decisions in MODx and Flash. We went from nothing to a public launch in two weeks.

Northwest Sarcoma Foundations’ designer had disappeared to South Korea and wouldn’t return their calls. A day before they launched a major fundraiser, they discovered that donors could no longer sign up or send money. I had five hours to diagnose the problem, wade through messy code, and fix it. After I did just that, their fundraiser went on to be a great success.

I was responsible for the vast majority of the task of theming the Clean Economy Network’s complex new Drupal site. As always, it was on a strict deadline with many detailed customer requirements. I consulted with members of CEN and their creative agency in my role of translating their designs and requirements into a functional, standards-compliant Drupal theme.

• Adapted static pages to Drupal theme
• Theme adapts to multiple levels of logged and anonymous users
• Also provided some configuration

Like many non-profits, the Portland Fruit Tree Project doesn’t have a lot of time or money to spend on their website. Their site had been composed of static pages for too long, and they were finding it very difficult and time-consuming to keep it up to date. Without a budget for a complete redesign and overhaul, they still needed a better solution. I helped translate their existing site to ModX, so they could easily edit content and update the existing sections. In the process, I streamlined what was once a tangle of generic classes and mismatched styles into a simple, easily-updatable set of CSS.

Sam’s Clothes is an iconic, locally-owned fixture in Ann Arbor, MI with a long-established identity. After multiple designers had failed to translate the feeling of shopping at Sam’s to the Web, I provided consultation and original content to establish their presence on the Web on a very tight budget. I also implemented an online store, which is waiting to be launched due to staffing issues at Sam’s.

• Directed location photography?
• Responsible for all copy writing

The Flash interface for my portfolio features dynamically-generated, pseudo-3D blocks which each represent a project of mine, color-coded to their category. Each block contains information about the work inside it, and can launch a gallery to show it. The portfolio also incorporates a hand-written library of functions which builds words from hundreds of individual blocks. On the back end, my portfolio runs CRATES, a lightweight content-management framework I wrote from scratch. XML provided by CRATES becomes both an interactive block and a php-driven, non-Flash page.

• Interactive, code-driven graphics
• Automated content population
• Automated HTML generation for each gallery

The Omnivore was meant to be an online miscellany of the projects and interests of my friends and myself.

• Hacked Joomla core code to produce standards-compliant, tableless markup
• Complex, CSS-based isometric design

Note: I post this only as an example of design with limited functionality.

Launched only months before a significant new Joomla release, The Omnivore also had unfortunate timing in my own life. I entered my final, intense year at the Glasgow School of Art, and never found the time to maintain The Omnivore or translate it to the newer versions of Joomla. Alas. (I still think it’s pretty, though.)

CRATES is my personal content management framework. Still in its fledgling stages, CRATES is an attempt to provide a method to create standard formats for collections of content and automate their sharing and translation in a platform-agnostic manner. As proof of concept, and for my own use, the first application of CRATES I wrote can read the IPTC data from image files, write this and other metadata to a specially-formatted XML file, and create a Javascript-enabled gallery with a few simple steps. The resulting XML file, or CRATE, can be shared with any system which reads XML, such as the Flash portfolio I built for my art projects.

• Created and instructed summer courses in animation targeted at children aged 8 – 15
• Developed a course plan and description, prepared all materials, supervised groups of ten or more children, some with behavioral disorders
• Prepared the final animations to be compatible across multiple operating systems
• Taught two classes on the established Drawing and Painting courses for children aged 10 – 15

• Researched, sold, and catalogued new acquisitions
• Maintained, updated and helped repair an existing holdings database
• Performed a variety of office management tasks, regular retail customer service, receiving and ordering, and personal assistance duties to the company head
• Primary assistant at the New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles rare book fairs

• Researched and verified fine and rare books dating from the 15th century – present
• Wrote and proofed catalogue copy
• Responsible for digitizing the catalogue production process
• Shared administrative duties, performed conservation tasks, processed orders
• Instrumental part of the company’s presence at the New York, Portland, and Seattle rare book fairs

• Catalogued and researched rare art and design books (primarily 20th century)
• Retail and internet sales, packing and shipping, general administrative duties
• Principle assistant at the Portland book fair

• Catalogued and researched general, rare, and antiquarian books and ephemera
• Internet and retail sales
• Shipping and receiving, general administration, stock-taking, and maintenance
• Managed the store’s presence at Ann Arbor Art Fair