About

Since the peak of the first Internet boom in 2000, I have been working in digital mediums, designing web sites, online marketing campaigns, and user interfaces. In addition, I’ve worked in print, creating corporate identity systems, marketing campaigns, and print advertisements.

Working independently or in affiliation with other organizations, I have worked on commercial, community, and personal websites. Much of the work in this portfolio was contracted through Design Purity. Some pieces contained here were produced during my tenure at Wells Fargo Bank and Bank of America. And some of the examples stem from my partnership with the Bad Seed Music record label.

What is Design Purity?

Besides the name of my studio, Design Purity describes a philosophy, a set of values that I adhere to and use in analyzing goals and results. Using this philosophy, we find direction when facing decisions involving features, layout, content, and design. Ultimately, design purity is an aim, a target that guides my work from start to finish, and a basis on which to base evaluation of completed projects. What defines Design Purity? A complete product that achieves these values:

  • Aesthetically attractive and distinctive
  • Functionally logical, intuitive, and usable
  • Capable and powerful
  • Efficient use of resources
  • Embrace the most critical elements
  • Banish the unnecessay
  • Enduring

The Role of Emotion

In all of it’s forms, from industrial to graphic, design fascinates and excites us. As we cast a critical eye towards form, two of the most important characteristics of any design are its overall elegance and simplicity.

Elegance is a quality not easily judged. It can be subjective - it requires an emotional investment to understand and quantify. Elegant design stands out for it’s efficient operation and highly intuitive functionality, combined with aestheticly pleasing presentation. It sounds simple, but experience (both our own and that of others) tells us that it is among the most challenging combination of qualities to achieve. Elegant web design can imbue users with a sense of comfort, enhacing their sense of trust.

Simplicity, on the other hand, is more objective, more efficiently measured. People are easily attracted to bells and whistles, to nifty tricks. Too often people are lured in by the features that add complexity without a commensurate benefit in function. In the end, the web is a information delivery channel. To that end, simplicity serves users better than complexity, sometimes at the cost of visual distinction. So simplicity is an functional imperative, balanced with an aesthetic aptitude to avoid austerity. Functional simplicity puts users at ease, and making your visitors comfortable will increase the odds that they’ll want to return.

At Design Purity, we avoid superfluous features that can subvert the true focus of our clients’ websites.. Importantly, strict adherence to these principalls serves other critical objectives, such as web pages that load quickly, cross-browser compatibility, and search engine optimization.

Websites are more than navigation and text: they are an extension of your company, and a good one should reflect your company’s values, personality, and brand. Before we write a line of code or fire up Photoshop, we take time to understand what our clients need to communicate about their business and work to ensure those values are reflected in every aspect of their website.

Functionally, we start with a clear and accurate evaluation of the most critical functions, then design simple, clear navigation system; devise a layout that emphasizes the content of the site; spice things up with graphics; and optimize the site content, tags, and code to ensure effective search engine optimization.

Beyond Intuition

Intuition alone is not enough to ensure the optimal user experience, so other tools remain critical to creating great products. Steps such as simple field study - watching real customers use a web site - can be a powerful tool to learn what is right and what needs improvement.

Our passion for great design means that we are not satisfied with average performance - we demand the best from ourselves and do not stop short of our high goals - a design solution that has achieved functional elegance.

In the real world, of course, time and fiscal responsibilities reign supreme, so these goals are always pursued with regard to schedules and budgets. Nonetheless, with a clear focus and understanding of efficient design, the pursuit of elegance and simplicity is our master at Design Purity.