I've been designing for the web now for nearly four years, first as a freelancer, then as Art Director of a design boutique. Though most of my time lately has been spent on corporate web design , which pays the bills, my true love is online editorial design , which is generally more fun and, at times, a wee bit strange. Some examples of both are below. There are also some works in progress , in case you want to see what I'm doing right now. In most cases I was the Art Director and/or primary designer. I've also done many of the illustrations, most of the digital photographic manipulation, and some of the JavaScript. Where others have contributed, their roles are noted.

Tweak, an online magazine of politics, parody, and pop culture produced and edited by myself and a few friends, has received excellent reviews in many periodicals, been included in several books and articles on web design, and earned numerous awards including Cool Site of the Day and the High Five. I'm responsible for the design and layout of the stories, each of which has a unique look, as well as most of the day-to-day operations. A select few of my favorite story designs follow.

This is a collection of famous urban legends, retold as if they all happened to one guy. I'm particularly proud of the of the digitally-created "photographic" objects used as icons for each legend.

This story features a Java slot machine and the only online blackjack game that let's you order drinks. I designed the story as well as the GUI for the game. I especially like the way the neon came out -- it makes me want to turn down the lights and drink cheap Scotch.

There are many theories about the best way to wrap text around an odd-shaped object (a Jeep coming out of a mushroom cloud, for instance) using HTML. This one's from the days of Netscape 2.0. There are better ways now.

"How 'bout a heart-shaped taco?" suggested the writer of this piece during our initial brain-storming. "Sure," I said, "I can make you a heart-shaped taco. Would you like sour cream on that?" I wound up scanning an actual tortilla to make the shell, but the fillings made a mess of the scanner. Good thing he didn't want sour cream.

This piece called for some elaborate photo manipulation -- you just can't find stock photos of dead bodies, men smoking racoon tails, or sexy women wearing nicotine patches. The author was quite happy, though a bit surprised, to see the photographic images from his rather bizarre dreams.

I designed Etheria's site with loose, brush-stroke illustrations and paper textures to give it an elegant and stylish look. Innovative JavaScript and funky HTML techniques make it technically sophisticated as well.

HR Design is a new branch of Etheria specializing in Human Resource web sites, such as recruitment sites, job boards, and HR intranets. The site uses Cascading Style Sheets, embedded TruDoc fonts, and a couple of other nifty features, but yet somehow manages to maintain browser compatibility all the way back to 2.0 without different pages for different browsers. The early designs weren't quite so lucky. This inside page concept , for example, is cool but has some serious backwards compatibility issues.

My staff and I at Etheria developed the Electronic Mailman mascot and designed this site for Lotus cc:Mail around him. Lotus' staff has maintained and modified the site since it's launch in December 1996. The original design is at http://www.etheria.com/ccMail/index.htm .

Etheria worked closely with OnLive! Technologies' staff, who provided general art direction and back-end work, to build this web site. I did the design and some of the illustrations. The original, bau-haus inspired look and feel, has become the basis for subsequent marketing materials and collateral for the software company.

The original North Captiva site was one of my very first paying web gigs. This recently launched total overhaul gave the site a new look, a much more scalable architecture, and some e-commerce features. Trouble is, they're having some trouble getting a microwave dish to work on the island, so the site's not yet integrated with their reservation system. Maybe after hurricane season. The original site is still viewable, if you'd like to see a before and after, as is an unused concept for the re-design, which I though was quite nice as well. rejected one was quite nice as well.

This site, for a Silicon Valley-based recruiter, uses hip and vibrant photos of power imagery to illustrate the firm's belief in "Power in Contacts." I manipulated stock photography and a photo of the firm's principal to create the icons.

I just finished the front-end design for a brand new portal site with a really valuable domain name. The back-end is still being constructed, but the whole thing should go live sometime in October. I'm particularly proud of the 30-some icons I designed for the site's directories. And the "translucent" table cells on the drill down and site list pages are pretty cool, too.

Synergy, a mid-sized software consulting firm, just approved this spartan look for a redesign of their current web site. Look for some DHTML-based interactivity coming from the three icons and, of course, a bunch more pages. I also designed their new logo.