Since October of 2007, I have been working for Symantec, the giant security software company headquartered in Cupertino, CA. I have been doing frontend engineering on a portion of MySymantec, the web portal that provides for the customization of select client/user services. Using HTML and CSS, I have been building GUIs, or Graphical User Interfaces, for online applications. more...
In 1997, I created over 200 Adobe Illustrator drawings for the release of Oracle8. By 1999, when every programmer on the planet was working on the Y2K problem, I was doing HTML for a small marketing group at Oracle. Everyone in the print world was frantically trying to get everything onto the internet. more...
NASA - specifically the SETI Institute, contracted me to build a website for a scientific conference investigating the origins of life in the universe. They weren't looking for little green men. They were looking for the conditions that would allow life to exist in any form, even microscopic. They were looking for the chemical building blocks of life. more...
At Intuit in 2005, I reformatted dynamic content from the Intuit homepages for the retail sites that carried Intuit products, including BestBuy, CompUSA, Staples, OfficeMax, etc. I was required to use both table and tableless page structure, extensive CSS, current XHTML standards, and some DHTML. I also did quite a bit of Photoshop image optimization, as well as modified Flash files.. more...
At Apple I was contracted to work on the Support section of the Apple website. I converted pages built in table structures to tableless divs. Using XHTML and CSS, I made both major and minor modifications to the existing pages, as well as building new pages. I even contributed to writing some new content. more...
FileMaker, a subsidiary of Apple, had a proprietary source-control system of their own called FilemakerCMS. In this development environment I modified existing pages and created new ones. I was required to do both table and tableless design, as well as image optimization using Photoshop. more...
McAfee used a development environment called Accurev. Page structures were primarily tableless, but older pages were still being converted to the new template according to XHTML and CSS standards. I also created several holiday banners in Photoshop. more...
In 2006, Stanford University contracted me to build 100 new HTML pages for the Stanford Challenge part of the website. In a Teamsite development environment, I formatted Word doc pages into XHTML and CSS. more...
Three times I was in the interview pipeline at Cisco. Each time they took so long to hire me that I accepted another contract. To complete the application process, I created several pages of both gif and flash animations. more...
I am often asked in interviews why I have always been a contractor. Actually, I worked for Lockheed fulltime for 13 years as a technical illustrator before I was layed off or "downsized" as they called it then. I left there with 25 years total experience, the last seven years on a computer, a VAX workstation, as well as a mac. more...
After Lockheed layed off 20,000 workers, jobs in Silicon Valley were scarce. I decided to apply in the videogame industry, because I knew that they hired artists. I was hired at SEGA by a man who had been an art director at Disney Studios. more...
One of my webdesign contracts in 2007 was for a small software company that was building an online store for the AICPA, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. They were a very competent team of engineers, but they need help with XHTML and CSS. more...
One of my freelance projects in 2005 was for a small media company in San Francisco. Their client, Sun Microsystems, needed a Flash presentation with voiceover. We started with screenshots of the website they wanted to explain. more...
Like many webdesigners and computer graphic artists, my background is in fine art. I learned to draw as a child in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA. That training formed the basis of my career as a visual designer. more...
I taught graphic design at San Jose City College for seven years (1973-1980) while I was earning my BA from San Jose State.
The course was called "Lettering and Layout" and was essentially beginning Graphic Design. The dean of the college of Arts and Humanities had been a showcard letterer in his youth, and loved lettering in general. He was impressed with my calligraphy, and hired me to teach freehand lettering, which was actually still an occupation in the 70's. Now it's all computerized, of course.
The course curriculum also covered type faces, which of course had evolved out of the historic calligraphic hands. Typography has been around for centuries, for as long as the history of the alphabet, in fact. The Roman alphabet still takes its name from the first western civilization that was literate. The beginning of writing goes back to the first cave paintings, beyond the scope of this website, but I'm sure you can Google it and learn more. University courses in lettering start with the development of the alphabet, so I included a bit of this history in my course. But there was too much ground to cover to study this in depth.
I also worked for a number of design firms in that time period. At one of these, I was a professional calligrapher for a firm called The New Scribes, where I hand-lettered menus, certificates, wedding invitations, and the like. The owner of the firm had been a calligrapher at the Marin Renaissance Fair. I asked her to come to my class at City College to talk about calligraphy, and she ended up hiring me. A couple of my prize students also worked for her. It jump-started their careers in graphic design.
