I design websites, develop content, do digital marketing and SEO, set up analytics, organize complicated information, and spend an unreasonable amount of time asking whether a heading, button, or sentence is actually doing its job.
Give me the complicated information, scattered ideas, half-finished pages, business goals, and the thing you’ve been trying to explain for six months. We’ll find the shape of it.
I’m especially drawn to projects with an interesting problem to solve, a strong story to tell, or information to untangle. I am also deeply interested in social, environmental, and community focused work.
Why I started this blog
This blog is called Your Digital Life, But Better.
I named it that because I actually want to demystify this stuff for people. The web and marketing world loves gatekeepers who sound like they are speaking an alien language. You shouldn’t need to understand Lemurian to run a business online.
I’ll write about web design, user experience (or the lack thereof) branding, content creation, marketing, SEO, and how they all tie together. Some posts will be practical tips and guides, or address common problems I see. Some will be case studies. Some will break down a project, a problem, or a decision that changed the direction of a project.
Others will probably start with something that irritated me on a website at 7 a.m. when I was under-caffeinated and couldn’t figure out how to buy a pair of trail running shoes on a vaguely legit overseas discount website (because trail shoes are expensive). I may also write about coffee, cats, coral reefs, and other random thoughts just to keep things spicy.
How I ended up here
I had been interested in art and writing for years, and I had always been comfortable around technology. I was an early adopter in the Gen X sense: dial-up internet, an iMac, Hotmail, and eventually teaching myself enough about computers to replace hardware and diagnose problems.
I also had a habit of teaching myself whatever caught my interest, from photography and guitar to sewing, cooking, and shady tree mechanics. On the surface, that is…a pretty darn random collection of interests. However, the through line is problem-solving: learning how something worked, diagnosing the problem, and figuring out how to fix it. When I found the Communication Design program at North Island College, it brought together design, writing, strategy, technology, and the same love for problem solving.
As a kid, I was an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy. I also loved art, design, creative writing, and building imaginary worlds that felt real. That is still how I think about brand storytelling now. A brand inhabits a world of its own, with a voice, visual language, point of view, and internal logic.
In my late twenties, I went back to community college and discovered that I genuinely love writing essays. That led to writing and editing for a local alternative newspaper, becoming music editor at The Vigilance in Port Townsend, Washington, and later freelancing for the Port Townsend Leader..
When I later studied communication design, I learned more about how words, imagery, colors, hierarchy, structure, and design all work together to communicate with the intended audience.
After graduating, I kept going: digital marketing, Google Analytics, SEO, content, social media, and e-commerce.
Before I go
I am a web and marketing professional, researcher, coffee drinker, and persistent question-asker. I’m also a mom to an awesome eighteen-year-old son, a mountain biker, a trail runner, a snowboarder, and I am unaccountably obsessed with being underwater with tropical fish.
This blog is where I’ll write about the work, the thinking, the problems, the occasional rant, and whatever else seems interesting enough to explore.
Stay tuned!
