Experience
I’ve been consulting since 2014, building upon years of in-house design experience on flagship products at LinkedIn and Adobe. I know firsthand how design teams and companies scale. No matter how large or small your company is, I know how to set up your product – and your future designers – up for success.
Philosophy
I think in logic and art
I do project-based design work to ensure time for my fine art practice.
I have extensive practice in both traditional and digital design, largely learned on the job after my formal education in computer science and studio art. Years of leading UX design for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator also gave me a lot of exposure to experts in photography, print, animation, and 3D.
I aim to amplify the human touch
Technology can supercharge the skill and judgment of people…yet can also lead to surprising emergent behaviors. The human touch is always needed to interpret what’s going on and lead to the best outcomes.
I‘m drawn to the practice and craft
I want to keep doing both design and art. I’ve shifted to a career path of practice so I can do so. “Practice” to me means that I move between architect and lead-level strategy work to individual design work to production art as needed. It also means integrating seamlessly into existing teams and tools, and strive to leave them better for future designers to come.
Why “Make It Legit”
I was looking for a way to describe the qualities that make a design successful beyond the surface of visual appeal. A good solution needs to work for the people involved, the technology stack, and the business goals. It also needs to be ethical, and actively designed to prevent exploitation or abuse.
I started writing up my thoughts under this moniker while working at LinkedIn. When I decided to strike out on my own, I adopted it to describe what I do.
Articles I’ve written arranged by topic:
I share practical design articles at @makeitlegit at Twitter, directly cited from their author/source wherever possible. I also contributed a chapter about introductory infosec practices to 97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know from O’Reilly Press.