About
Dedicated to building simple, elegant, visually appealing, web-standards, accessible websites, designsimply.com is a collection of my passions for design, photography and code. I am addicted to Photoshop. I design with Dreamweaver, eclipse, or Coda. I code with XHTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL, using a little JavaScript, and using a lot of Usability, Accessibility, and W3C Web Standards. I like fast code, fast databases, fast servers, and slow food; and, I have been known to use adverbs excessively.
Philosophy
- Simplicity is a feature
- Less (code) is more
- Content first
- Get things done
- Use design patterns
- Write tests
- Leverage existing code
- Keep it simple, make it usable
- Love your work
Five Principles to Design By
Adopted from Joshua Porter of Bokardo.
- Technology serves humans
- Design is not art
- The experience belongs to the user
- Great design is invisible
- Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
Photography
Design is my life. Photography is my passion. I am an exclusive iStockphoto photographer where I’ve managed to meet quite an amazing mix of design and photography talent. You can view my latest work at this site by visiting the latest stock photography page or the photo gallery.
Advocacy
In my capacity as a photographer/programmer, I have been a volunteer and an advocate for Red Butte Garden, the Junior League of Salt Lake City, the Junior League of Ogden, and the Utah Science Center.
My Story
I first learned HTML in the depths of the University of Utah Marriott Library during the time I spent on campus as a summer enrichment scholar. I soon found myself taking any web developer job I could get through the University of Utah work study program. After completing my bachelor’s degree, I landed an incredibly cool job as Webmaster for Myriad Genetics.
Favorite Reads
456 Berea Street
A List Apart
Authentic Boredom
CSS Beauty
Digital Web Magazine
Fadtastic
Fiftyfoureleven- Ideas on ideas
Jason Santa Maria
Jeffrey Zeldman
Photojojo
SimpleBits
Jonathan Snook
Stylegala
Techcrunch
Veerle’s Blog
What I’m Listening To
- SXSW Podcasts
- Danny Sullivan’s Daily Searchcast
- Garden State Soundtrack
- Dashboard Confessionals
- Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
What I’m Reading
- Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
- Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
- The SEOMoz Blog
People Who Impress Me
- Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer for their completely brilliant “ruby on rails vs” commercials imitating the mac vs pc campaign by Apple (even though one is anti-PHP), and because they’re interweb idols.
- Jeremy Keith, because he’s so damn accessible, he wrote an amazing book on AJAX, and he is an unrelenting blogger.
- Matt Mullenweg, wildly successful founding developer of WordPress, unassuming, and all-around nice guy. Am fascinated by his company, Automattic.
- Kelly Goto, my favorite conference lecturer and design ethnographer.
- Jeffrey Zeldman, because everyone respects his work.
- Eric Meyer, because he is a CSS expert extrodinairre.
- Craig Newmark, for building an unbelievably amazing company service mission and non-corporate culture.
- Tantek Celik, thought leader, Technorati employee, and inventor of microformats.
- DL Byron, quite the inspiring accidental entrepreneur and renowned corporate blogger.
- Dave Shea, because CSS Zen Garden is hella-cool.
- Andy Budd, wrote my current favorite CSS book: CSS Mastery.
- Danny Sullivan, search engine industry authority, a class above the rest.
- Carl Honore, for his brilliant voice and style, one of my most favorite authors.
- Renee Lee, because she is a self-starter and a wildly successful photographer on her way up.
