It all started innocently enough. I was a summer away from graduating from The University of Illinois Chicago. During my time there I studied communication and journalism. I had several prominent professors that guided me along this path. I studied multi-media in mass communication as well as inter-personally, It was a broader ranging major because of the two focuses. This, and some help from my dad, helped land me a marketing internship in New York City for a start-up business social networking site called Visible Path. It was while working on 22nd and 7th Ave. in New York, I first began thinking about design. Two slightly scruffy flash animators presented us with a beautifully animated sequence that opened my eyes to the possibility of how design can convey information.

After returning to Chicago from New York I hooked up with some local musicians that I had met through school.  I had brought a lot of knowledge about web-marketing and business development back from my internship in New York..., or at least I though I had. The plan was to do marketing and promotions and see if my efforts resulted in some publicity for the various projects I was working on.

I learned quickly that marketing and promoting a small band or DJ was a whole lot different then marketing a start-up social network company. there was much more of a demand to create something visually appealing, and representational of the sound. Soon after I was doing flyers for events and promotions, designing logos, and starting to learn more about graphic design in general.

At this point, some of friends were beginning successful as DJ's and musicians, so I was increasingly more busy promoting their events, mainly by producing promotional material, but I knew there was a greater need for an on-line presence. Much of the other bands that we liked had wildly animated and artistic looking web-sites, this is when I learned about this great program called Flash.

Suddenly,  I was able to take a flash file and supply a web-experience that I had crafted graphically. Essentially the brochure-ware revolution had begun.  I could take something I had designed move elements around with a mouse position them at a a whim and publish directly. During this period I was creating more "non-traditonal" designs that would appeal to the entertainment seeking users who visited my bands' web-sites.

I had a lot of freedom, and received little money, and most of the work that I was doing was extremely non-conventional. I relied heavily on the use of animations and graphics..., some of these sites are available in the "graveyard" section. Some of them are simply just too embarrassing to produce at this time.

"Sullivan Andrews - Band Website" (Flash)- 2006

This was a design for an Electronic Press Kit, with audio, and photo elements.

I’m starting to look deeper into flash based web design. I’m learning more about interface design but relying heavily on Photoshop. My heavy focus on graphic design leads me into motion graphics using After Effects. I start mixing the different programs Flash, After Effects, and a program called Swift3d. I’m attempting to merge the three platforms into my work my greatest success of this was the White Eyelash site.

I'm trying to learn as much as I can about the basic scripting language that is used in Flash, It was called Action script 2.0. at the time. I was getting comfortable with some basic functions that could be assigned to the graphics I had created. I was mostly free to focus on design, and not really have to program in order to create my site.

I keep working at learning how to use these different multimedia components together, and soon enough I find myself producing more projects with 3d components to them. I'm also beginning to get a more solid grasp on flash in general.

The more and more that I begin to learn about flash and web-design, the more the field is changing.  I'm starting to realize that in order for me to continue to progress as a designer I need to shift my attention towards a more contemporary feel, the challenge was going to be, how do I do that and continue to be an individual?

I'm still doing a lot of Photoshop work during this point, mostly just image manipulation, custom graphics, but now user interface creation, and even doing some video editing and motion graphics.

This is when I really begin to look farther into design principles and concepts, as they apply to the work I am creating. I decide that It's time to go back and cover some of the basics that I may have missed.

I was starting to feel like I needed to be learning more markup. Most of the work I had been doing up until this point was heavily based around using graphics, animation, and different multi-media features, and I was happy with that, but at the same time the web had started to change again.

I started to see more and more highly sophisticated sites that had the look and feel of something made with flash, but the code and layout of HTML.

This was around the time when jQuery and other java-script libraries started becoming very popular.  I could begin to sense that I needed to shift my focus to that area so that I could become more well rounded.

This Is where I begin to get very serious bout what I am doing.  Before I had obtained various certifications in various "Macromedia" products, this is of course before Adobe bought them out. 

I keep hearing things like "You're really not bad at this you should go to school for it." It's not the worst thing to hear, but if you've already graduated from college it's a little bit of a back-handed complement.  But, essentially, having exhausted most of the good resources around me, and simply not having  a strong network of industry professionals It was a decision that I was coming closer to making If I was serious about doing this for a career.

Taking that into account I went and met with a recruiter at The Illinois Institute of Art. I went through my portfolio, most of the flash stuff above, and learned that I could earn a BFA in Web-Design and Interactive Media in less then two years.

At first art school was a very strange experience. I was in intro web-design classes, and art fundamentals classes. It wasn't exactly foreign to me since I had some success in art during high school, I was even a tour-guide at the Art museum, but I clearly had to scramble to keep up.

I was anticipating a jump straight into technical coursework.  Instead, I was learning a lot of the conceptual material behind both web-design and design in general.

It was a good opportunity to design things and develop my graphic design skills, and at first the course load allowed me to do a good deal of free-lance work.

I was still eager to advance but I was starting to understand that this background is what helps me as a designer even to this day, and is a big difference between those who went through a "design" program, and those who didn't.

I was beginning to study what I had previously taught myself and see it's full potential.  Ialso began learning (systematically this time) how to program.  The language we were learning was Action Script 2.0, which is now out of date, but I was learning the fundamentals of programming, and my understanding of Flash was growing.

But, I still felt I was out of my depth. I still had very little understanding of HTML and CSS, even though I was immersed in them. It was a little like not knowing a language but living in a country where it was spoken almost exclusively, I was lost but I always had good guides in my instructors and classmates.

So that's how it went. We spent 44 weeks a year for two years learning web-design and development. Hot summers in Chicago were spent in front of monitors in cold dark classes. Those days went by incredibly fast, we were learning exciting new things.

Eventually I would begin to feel at home in the computer labs in the loop where I would spend 30 hours a week in classes learning multi-media and design from some of the most influential artists and programmers in my life.

"What you see when you dream" (After-Effects)- 2008

This is from an Introduction to Motion Graphics class.

Finally, things started to sink in. I was learning HTML and actionScript, I took classes in writing for interactive media  and E-learning. I started trying to develop a style for myself that reflected what I was learning but still showed a lot of un-refined creativity and enthusiasm.

I was building my school portfolio at this time. I had several really solid Flash pieces and some really "not so great" HTML projects.... that is about to change.

I was learning more about programming than I ever had before.  Action Script 3.0 had just been released. With the heavier incorporation of Object Oriented Programing (OOP), we were learning how to create websites and interactivity in a new and different way.

At this point I stepped back from graphics and animation, and tried to assume a more analytical frame of mind, learning the other half of what I had simply taken for granted in my earlier years, and not only that, but learning it in the most cutting edge and evolving language for "web-design" at the time.

This was the bench-mark in my understanding of multi-media design. It represents a shift in my ideas about the placement of graphics in my designs.  Here you see, I'm still relying heavily on graphical content in order to get my point across, but I'm doing it without key-frames.

I was becoming a better programmer.

I began to understand the importance of re-usability, a concept that will guide my later work.  I like the way that OOP is easily customizable once you have a solid frame-work in place. From here I begin my journey into a new direction.

My concluding course-work was designing an e-commerce site, and we spent a great deal of time learning how to build databases in a theoretical sense at first, following by learning SQL, and it's accompanying language PHP.  I learned to construct simple shopping carts and bulletin boards.  It was at about this time that I was introduced Content Management Systems.

First I made a website for a political organization that was tracking issues relating to the 2016 Olympic Bid in Chicago. In particular they were interested in polling visitors to the website. The site was also used for collecting comments on issues and threads, whether created, posted or linked to on the site itself.  This is when I started using something called Drupal.

Having grasped the core concepts and studying abundant documentation and informational articles. I decided to create another CMS for a not-for-profit. My first objective was to produce an easy to use site and also connect people who need habilitation services to the appropriate providers.

After graduation I was doing free-lance projects, and at the same time building the site you are looking at to demonstrate some of my new-found understanding of CMS design. 

Eventually that landed me a contract at the Chicago Merchantile Exchange where I was responsible for administering a gigantic CMS that handled the merger of the New York and Chicago exchanges. I did cross-browser testing and javascript UI improvements.  Soon after I was scooped up by a Drupal-heavy design and consulting company called Maven Web-Design.

My work with Maven was good and the bulk of what you see on my site portfolio section are examples of that time.  However, I'm always working on my own ventures, and always have new projects in the work. It's the adventure of learning new tools and concepts that always keeps me pressing on.

Thanks for looking at my about page ... please visit the home or my work!