Website Design and Development
I started working on websites at the Traverse City Record-Eagle in 1998, where I updated the newspaper's site nightly after the print version of the paper headed out the door to the printing press, using a text editor to hand code site updates. While working as a copy editor for the newspaper, I moonlighted at local web firm Traverse Internet, building and optimizing websites for commercial clients before the firm was bought out by Charter Communications.
These days, my full-time job is maintaining and updating the websites for Northwestern Michigan College, the Dennos Museum Center and WNMC 90.7 Community Radio. The work involves incorporating new features like news feeds, slideshows and embedded video, and training NMC staff and students to update their areas of the sites. I also oversaw a major redesign of the NMC and WNMC sites in 2015 (and wrote the news release on the redesign) and the Dennos site in 2016, moving the sites to a responsive design framework to display better on smartphones, tablets and desktop computer monitors. I also oversee the NMC Communiqué and Explore NMC blogs, and NMC's social media channels including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.
As a web developer for Bright Bridge Studios, I helped build a new website for renowned golf course designer Tom Doak and worked on the site for his Renaissance Golf Design company. I also built websites for the New Zealand-based Arria Design Group — a multidisciplinary design firm involved in branding, retail, product and other design services. I also built a 72-page website under a tight time frame for Comprehensive Consulting Group, a financial services firm based in New York, bringing together three formerly separate websites and helping to unify the firm's brand (see an archived version here or a screenshot below).
Also for Bright Bridge, I helped design and build a website for Anderson Builders (see an archived version here or a screenshot below), multiple book award sites for the Jenkins Group publishing services firm (including the current version of the eLit Book Awards site) and the Leelanau Montessori Public School Academy in Suttons Bay.
Another Bright Bridge client I work with is the Amadeus String Quartet of Chappaqua, New York, the resident quartet of the Amadeus Conservatory of Music. I also helped migrate Leelanau Studios' website to a new responsive WordPress theme with custom colors pulled from the company logo, and installed a slideshow on the homepage to feature the studio's artists (see an archived version here or a screenshot below).
I also set up and populated a new WordPress site for Lakeview Counseling and trained the firm's employees on how to update the site.
At Corbin Design, I took part in four redesigns of the firm's website in 10 years. I also worked on internal and external websites and digital media projects for many of the firm's clients, including General Motors, Steelcase Inc. and Herman Miller, Inc., helping Corbin's designers turn their vision into reality and making design suggestions of my own.
Below are screenshots of websites that I've worked on that are no longer online.
