Craft Foundations

My first primary design tool wasn’t Figma. It was a plain HTML file and a browser.

I learned design by writing the markup, refreshing the page, adjusting spacing by hand, and watching the result render in real time. Form and function weren’t separate disciplines. If something didn’t work, it was my responsibility to fix it.

Before that, my instincts were visual. I studied visual art and technical drawing—not professionally, but seriously. Drafting taught me precision. Art taught me composition, proportion, and restraint. When the early web emerged, those instincts met code.

I became what used to be called a webmaster. I designed interfaces, wrote front-end code, managed CMS systems, built databases, handled branding, and maintained production environments. I shipped complete systems. There was no handoff.

I’ve always been drawn to visual simplicity.

Not minimalism as trend, but as discipline. White space. Clear hierarchy. No ornament beyond what serves the moment. Remove distraction. Keep what matters. Let the structure carry the weight.

That sensibility shaped my early web work and still informs how I design today.

Because I’ve built from the inside, I design with constraints in mind. I think about structure, maintainability, performance, and clarity from the beginning. I value simplicity not as aesthetic reduction, but as durability.

Today, my work includes AI-forward systems and agentic workflows.

I don’t see AI as a feature to bolt onto an interface because the market demands it. I see it as a material—something users form a relationship with. It reshapes trust, agency, and how a product behaves over time. That requires deep consideration before expression, and architectural clarity before implementation.

The scale has changed since those early HTML files. The mindset hasn’t.

I still think close to the product. Close to the code.

And aware that every design decision eventually becomes something someone has to build, maintain, and live with.

I design how systems behave. And I understand how they’re made. And experienced.