About

My background is in freelance design and projects of my own. I’ve never taken a staff role at a design company, and I’m not planning to take that route.

Design is still the most useful word for what I do. But I also want to decide what gets made, build it, write about it, and stay involved after the first version goes live. Having a finished screen to show is only part of what interests me.

My work now includes a design service, longer-term product ideas, and this site. There are parts of each that I wouldn’t get from working on the others.

I like having that range. I don’t need to turn it into advice about how everyone else should work.

I’m drawn to websites where the text has been given real care. The relationship between a heading and a paragraph matters to me. So does the point where a line breaks, or how much space a piece of writing needs before it becomes comfortable to read.

I like visual restraint, but I don’t want to remove everything that gives a page its character. There should still be something to recognize. A particular choice of type, an image, or an unexpected bit of movement can do a lot when the rest of the page gives it room.

That attention extends beyond how something looks. I want to know what happens when the title gets longer, when the page is opened on a phone, or when someone uses it in a way the neat example didn’t cover.

These are the kinds of decisions I enjoy getting into. I also want to get the page finished. Those two preferences need some negotiation.

Travel, filmmaking, history, and making physical things deserve more than the time left over after work. At least, that’s the kind of life I’m trying to build.

With places, I’m interested in the history behind what is there now. A trip can be a chance to follow that interest. It doesn’t have to become a work opportunity or a set of things to post.

Film appeals to me as something to watch closely and something to make. I’d like more of my time to go into looking, recording, and working out how to tell a story with what I’ve found.

I’d also like to make more room for work with physical materials. So much of the design I do ends up on a screen. I want some of the things I make to be objects I can hold and use.

Some of these interests may become projects. Others can remain things I do because I want to do them. I don’t need each one to justify a business model.

Independence matters to me for practical reasons. I’d like more say in what my time goes toward. Finishing a product is one use for it. Going somewhere or making something that has no commercial purpose should be possible too.

That is what I want the businesses and systems to support. It would be a strange result to build all this infrastructure and have no time left for anything beyond maintaining it.

There is a tension here I want to keep visible. I enjoy thinking through a system in detail. I also want it to help me move on to the next thing. More structure is only useful to me when it makes some part of the actual work easier.

I don’t have a finished formula for balancing those interests. I want to keep enough freedom to change the arrangement when it stops making sense.

Part of this site is a collection of things that catch my attention. It has room for websites and tools, but also films, books, art, and people whose work I want to keep track of.

What matters to me is the note that goes with a choice. A screenshot can preserve the appearance of a page. The note can preserve what caught my attention: a particular detail, a useful explanation, or an idea I hadn’t considered before.

I don’t expect all these choices to look alike. I’m interested in the connections that become visible when different kinds of work sit near each other. And a choice can stop interesting me. Keeping it once doesn’t mean I have to keep recommending it forever.

The collection should have a point of view. It doesn’t need to pretend that point of view is permanent.

My name gives all of this a place to live together. A project can have a narrow purpose. This site can be broader, because the connection is that I’m interested in the things here.

I want someone to arrive through a useful article and find something else worth spending time with. They might follow a project, look through the collection, or read about a subject they didn’t come here for.

There’s no need for every page to lead toward a purchase. The businesses have their own places for that. Here, I want to leave a record of what I make and how my interests develop, without having to rewrite the entire introduction whenever something new takes hold.

I’m not looking for employment or one-off freelance projects through this site. I’m open to partnerships around my projects, and to conversations that have nothing to do with hiring anyone.

You don’t need to turn an introduction into a pitch. Tell me what brought you here, something you’re making, or a thought prompted by something I’ve written. A specific starting point helps.

My contact details and collaboration information are on a separate page.