Web Design & Development
During the dot-com era, Ty worked at frog Design in San Francisco. There, he learned the principals of world-class design and development of websites including keeping design simple and clean, object-oriented programming, and modularity of code. Most importantly, Ty has learned that client-based maintenance is key to a successful web application or site. Ty still contracts with frog from time to time. Click here to view Ty's letter of reference from frog Design.
Ty has also worked on major projects for high profile institutions. At California Academy of Sciences, Ty (along with a team of 2 others) implemented new designs based in PHP, mySQL, PERL, Javascript, and Flash across many pages within only a few months. Click here to see Ty's recommendation from the Web Manager at California Academy of Sciences.
What makes good web design?
Ty's philosophy on web design may seem obvious, but the principal is widely overlooked in the industry: "Never create a site to show off a specific technique. Only use a technique to help tell the site's story."
Through simplicity in design, making a site non-straining to the eyes, and easy to find what a user is looking for, you can drive traffic, keep them, and get your message across.
Ty's unique blend of a background in film, and in technology give him unique insight into visual and aural psychology. This helps in the quick development and execution of unique designs.
How can an artist be a good web developer?
Funny enough, artists make the best web developers. An artist's ability to abstract and think dynamically helps to create unique yet simple solutions to very complex problems. Case in point: re-usability of code. On this website, the same code is used for every page. Also, the same set of code is used to generate the media viewers (audio, video, and pictures) by simply passing variables dictating the location of media, and its type.
The artist's mindset of "The layout and code is merely the canvas to place your content" greatly increases a site's modularity. This way, once a template is made for the website... the programming is done, and the content creation can begin. Also, a full-site redesign doesn't necessarily mean recreating all of your content.
