Blog

Thoughts on design, websites, and everything in between.

A collection of ideas, lessons, and things I've learned through design, development, marketing, and building websites.

Behind the Scenes: What It Actually Takes to Fix a Chaotic Project

The Work You Don’t See — And Why It Matters People see the final website. They see the clean layouts, the organized navigation, the polished forms, and the automated workflows. What they don’t see is everything that happens behind the scenes to get there — especially when the project starts in chaos. This rebuild wasn’t […]

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Automation Isn’t Optional Anymore

Why I Build Systems That Filter Out the Noise and Elevate the Real Leads Everyone wants more leads. Nobody wants to deal with the wrong ones. This project made that painfully obvious — the client was getting flooded with inquiries from people who thought a $5k budget could handle a $20k project. So I built […]

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Rebuilding a Site That Was “Fine”

(Until It Wasn’t) Why a Rebrand Often Means Starting Over — And Why I’m the One Who Can Handle It Rebrands always start with the same sentence: “We just need a few updates.” But once you dig in, you realize the truth — the site isn’t built for the new direction. The layouts don’t support […]

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When No One’s in Charge, I Step In

When No One’s in Charge, I Step In Owning the Project When Everyone Else Is Just Talking There’s a moment in every messy project where you realize something important — nobody is actually steering the ship. Everyone has opinions, everyone has ideas, everyone wants something, but no one is making decisions. And when that happens, […]

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Cyberpunk designer at computer beside text reading “AI CAN HELP YOU THINK, BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO THINK.”

How Do We Create Senior Designers If Juniors Don’t Get to Learn?

I saw a post recently that got me thinking. The basic idea was simple: juniors can’t get experience without being given the opportunity to get experience. That sounds obvious, but somewhere along the way, we’ve made “experience” one of the requirements for getting experience. And now AI is changing that even more. AI can create […]

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Cyberpunk designer at computer beside text reading “AI CAN HELP YOU THINK, BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO THINK.”

AI Can Help You Think, But You Still Have to Think

I recently came across a LinkedIn post from Daniel Davidson about a client asking ChatGPT to review work their designer had created. The client came back with changes because ChatGPT said the design wasn’t following “best practices.” That got me thinking. Because I use AI. A lot. And I actually think it can be an […]

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Fantasy library scene labeled UX Designer, Brand Designer, Content Designer, Multimedia Designer, Social Media Designer, Digital Designer, Visual Designer, Web Designer, and Graphic Designer.

Maybe We Have Too Many Names for Designers

I recently came across a conversation on LinkedIn about how many different titles we now have for people who work in design. Graphic designer.Web designer.Digital designer.Visual designer.UX designer.UI designer.Brand designer.Content designer.Social media designer.Multimedia designer. And I get it. Design has grown into a huge field, and there are definitely specialties that require very specific knowledge. […]

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Designer writing user-centered design notes on a whiteboard

Why Every Great Project Starts with Understanding

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what actually makes a website project successful. Is it the design? The technology? The content? The functionality? The answer is probably a little bit of all of those things. But after years of working on websites, learning new tools, troubleshooting problems, building client projects, and finally building […]

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Person coding a personal website at a desk with monitor and laptop

What Building My Own Website Taught Me About My Clients

There is something different about building a website when you’re the client. I’ve built websites for other people for years. I know what it’s like to sit down with a client, talk through what they need, figure out what isn’t working with their current website, and start turning all of that information into something usable. […]

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Illustration with text: “I’ve always liked things to be done right. That sounds like a good thing. A website can always be changed. There is always something you could adjust. A heading could be worded differently. A section could be moved. The spacing could be tweaked. A photo could be replaced. A color could be changed. You could spend another hour trying to make one little detail look exactly the way you imagined it in your head. And sometimes that hour is worth it. Sometimes it isn’t. A website is never really finished.” Laptop labels read “HEADING,” “PHOTO,” “SECTION,” “SPACING,” and “COLOR.”

Progress Over Perfection

I’ve always liked things to be done right. That sounds like a good thing. And most of the time, it is. But there is a difference between caring about the quality of your work and waiting until everything is perfect before you allow yourself to move forward. I’ve had to learn that difference. Especially with […]

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Web design foundations surrounded by browsers, errors, code, and changing trends

The Fundamentals Never Go Out of Style

One of the funny things about working with technology is that the tools are always changing. Software gets updated. Plugins get new versions. WordPress changes. Hosting platforms change. Design trends come and go. Something that was standard a few years ago can suddenly feel outdated. And sometimes you click update and everything works exactly the […]

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Illustration with text: “FUNNY HOW YOU COME BACK TO WHAT YOU KNOW”; “There’s something funny about building your own website”; “I EARNED MY DEGREE IN Visual Communication Technology AT BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY. I WASN’T JUST LEARNING HOW TO MAKE SOMETHING LOOK GOOD ON A SCREEN.”; “BUT AS I MOVED THROUGH THE PROGRAM, I FOUND MYSELF GRAVITATING TOWARD TWO AREAS IN PARTICULAR: WEB AND PRINT.”; “PRINT.”; “PHOTOGRAPHY.”; “VIDEO.”; “HTML”; “CSS”; and “POSTER.” Two illustrated women appear among web layouts, a print press, camera, and video equipment.

Funny How You Come Back to What You Know

There’s something funny about building your own website. You start out thinking about the obvious things — what it should look like, what you want people to see, how you want to present yourself — and somewhere along the way, you realize you’re revisiting things you learned years ago. For me, that realization brought me […]

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