Web Design

My Web Design Experience:

My web design experience began in high school in the 90's, where online fan culture was centered around creating fan websites. I created a fan website for a band that I liked at the time. This was the first time when the concept of design really mattered to me. I would look at other band's websites for design inspiration. I really cared about the layout, the fonts used, how to present photos and information about the band. This is where I started to learn HTML. Also in high school, I was apart of the school's website design team and in my graduating year of high school for computer class, was a part of a team that created a version of the school's website for our final project. After working on my fan website for a number of years, I received positive feedback when Rolling Stone magazine's website recognized my site as one of the top fan websites for the band. I was pleasantly surprised by this news, and I was able to use this recognition to land a summer job as web designer with my home town.

In my position as web designer for my home town, I was responsible for creating sub webpages, mainly for the city's public library. This was my first experience in professionally creating web and graphic design work. I created all the visual elements for the sub webpages and programmed the pages in HTML.

I continued to create websites for my artwork while I was in university and I added my animation work to my portfolio website when I was in college.

After college, I was hired by an E-Learning company where I worked for nine years. Within the nine year period, I was given the opportunity to create over 75 E-Learning courses and training aids for Crown Corporations, Financial Institutions, Provincial and Federal Government Departments and Private Industry and was part of a team that won the Canadian Award for Training Excellence. These E-Learning courses were created in one of the following E-Learning applications: Lectora, Adobe Flash/Animate (courses programmed in Action Script), Adobe Captivate and Articulate. Courses ranged from 50 to 250 pages and were published out in HTML. I was also responsible for creating php links and pages so that clients could access and review courses. I also worked on the company's internal WordPress site.

My focus on learning and writing CSS began in 2015, when I wanted to create a responsive website for my portfolio. At the time, I read the book Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide To Html, Css, Javascript, And Web Graphics by Jennifer Robbins and I also learned a lot from the website w3schools. I also taught myself Bootstrap during this time.

After working for the E-Learning company, I worked in the public service where I was part of a team of early adopters of SharePoint and within six years working in the public service, I was part of a team that created a number of SharePoint websites using SharePoint online.

Today, I continue to stay up-to-date on the latest front-end web design technologies and techniques.