Check out “Baby happy? Baby mad.” →

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Jaxon's first moments of life

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Also on John’s posterous

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Bobbi is pregnant! Instead of sending out more pregnant photos, we are sending out videos! Expect to see more videos of Jaxon once he has arrived.

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My wife is a teacher as well and I’ve heard several teacher-like statements from her, so now it’s my turn to espouse my teaching philosophy.

I teach the way that I wish I was taught.
— Sal Khan, Khan Academy (via)

Not a very long philosophy, huh? I think we all have these same feelings about parenting: “When I grow up and have kids, I’m never going to make them do ____.” I’m serious though. I teach the way I learned best. I show examples I think are relevant and helped me. I guess a teacher is nothing more than a knowledge aggregator.

Education

The University of Texas at Dallas
Master of Fine Arts in Arts and Technology
Bachelor of Arts in Arts and Technology (Summa Cum Laude)

Freelance Clients

e3 Partners, Prestonplace Counseling Center, Lightner Creative, Lakeland Baptist Church, Pepperdine Campus Ministries, The Public Trust, W2W Painting, W2W Art, Integrated Telecom Solutions, Central Trak – UTD Artist Residency, UTD Office of Project Development, Wachovia Securities

Employment

Sr. Web Designer, Ambit Energy (January 2011 – present)
Multimedia Designer, Dallas Market Center (January 2008 – December 2010)
Professor, Web Design & Interactive Media, Art Institute of Dallas (April 2010 – August 2010)
Webmaster & Assistant Marketing Manager, University of Texas at Dallas (May – November 2007)
Freelance Interactive & Graphic Design (Fall 2003 – present)

Expertise

Branding, Ideas, Humor, Adobe Suite, Photography, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Audio/Video Editing

Awards

2nd Place, Brand America, Future Brand – (Brand America Student Design Contest)

Collegiate Honors & Elementary Honor Rolls

Upon request

Résumé (pdf) →

I know I get stuck sometimes thinking, “There’s no way I could redesign this. It’s been designed so many times.” Then I see this. How could you possibly improve on a USB jack? Brilliant! Make them chainable.

Furthermore, how are you going to improve on a plug design? What if the plug folded? It’s the crazy questions like that which lead to great designs such as this folding plug. Yeah, this solution is great design, but what’s even greater is the question that opened the door to the solution. This guy won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year, which to me doesn’t mean as much as the feeling of hand-hitting-forehead which this design brings about.

Finally, sometimes you need to rearrange your thinking. When buying a light fixture, almost always you consider how the light is going to be cast. This bulb design reverses that thinking; think instead of how the shadows are going to be cast.

What if I took that idea to web design. Don’t think about how best to present the content, but instead this about how to present the absence of content. We’ve been told to increase leading to increase legibility. Can we smash everything together to increase legibility? Crazy questions, but they’ve got to be posed to get crazy, head-slapping design.

Thanks to design milk for exposing me to design.

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A couple questions came to mind:

• Who designs these? Is it merely something done for a quick buck, or does the designer feel they have arrived at the pinnacle of their career when creating this? Just curious…
• Why the picture of the old, angry man? Is he “surprised at how much he can save?” Is he angry about the “US government… housing relief program?” Has he “mistakenly” eaten too many bananas and is now “surprised” at how constipated he is? I fail to see the connection.
• Are people checking the weather the prime audience for refinancing their home? I don’t think so. I would think the money would be spent better on another site, at least a house-oriented site.

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It’s my opinion the work speaks more than awards. I don’t really think a plethora of awards is going to be the deciding factor. Sure, it might look good and make your client feel warm inside, but does it break/make the bank?