The Background 👨🏼‍💻

The bulk of my design career thus far has been working freelance and working on intimate projects with a handful of people. I had to be scrappy, think on my feet and had little resources for fancy design practices. Until Recently.

This past year I have been working for XE — one of the most popular and dominant currency authorities in the world. They have a rich online history, large audience, and a variety of services offered.

Aside from the culture shock I experienced from this change of work environment, I also experienced a stark difference in the types of…

Designing things is great. Regardless of your title — UX designer, UI Designer, Information Architect, Illustrator — I know you agree. For those of us fortunate to make a living doing this, we know the job comes with its issues as well. Tough clients, creative block, Adobe products frequently crashing (seriously?).

However, I want to take a few minutes out of your time to highlight an issue bigger than all of these things. You. It takes a certain level of knowledge, personality, and drive to be an effective designer. We are detailed oriented. We obsess over kerning, colour, spacing and…

Spending my evening studying the work at one of my favourite design studios — Collins. You may know them as the force behind why spotify looks the way it looks.

Prior to them stepping in, Spotify looked like a stereotypical engineering product from silicon valley… except Spotify wasn’t that at all. It didn’t even start in California. It didn’t even start in America. Spotify’s advertisements of the past felt too calculated. They showed photos of their intended audience, used generic action verbs, and looked like everybody else.

The photo you see is from 1968. A music venue named Fillmore West…

Freelancing can be very tough. Whether you are grinding on Upwork, finding work on Dribble, or scouring Indeed for oppurtunities, there are a few pitfalls that may leave your profile less than desirable. With so much competition, it is important to do everything you can to boost chances of landing that client. I want to preface that these things are not every possible thing you can do, but rather are a collection of ideas I have learned during my quest to be the best freelancer I can be. …

As a UI/UX designer and researcher I have been spending the year exploring the idea of journalism, fake news, and new future possible user experiences. In short, I think Publiq is great, and I would love to get the word out on this service.

Publiq is a not-for-profit peer to peer distributed network that seeks to reward authors for creating accurate and meaningful content while at the same time building an ecosystem around smart news, and advertising in the hopes to give readers a way to get the most out of digital news. This media ecosystem is based on blockchain…

How Do You Say ‘Thank You’ For 10 Seasons of Support?

The Oklahoma City Thunder approached Acid Integrations to help them in executing on a fan campaign that would help fans show their OKC spirit, and give them a chance to show their pride at the Chesapeake Energy Arena Center. The focus of the campaign would be tied to the hashtag: #MyThunderStory

My role was to lead the design work and come up with the look and feel of the campaigns website, and also design the two displays that would be put up at the arena. I also designed the Central Management System.

Building a 360…

Crafting a Better User Experience For Online News

It is interesting to think that only 50 years ago, the typical adult would get their news by reading the daily paper. No screens, no ‘story recommendations’ and no sharing to your Facebook. Instead, people would pass the news along to the people in their lives verbally. People often refer to this as ‘the good old days’ or ‘simpler times’ however looking at the environment between today and yesterday — we can point out many similarities. Since the 1900s, advertisement has been critical for newspapers. Papers were littered with ads from different sources. Prior to this, they were littered with…