Mingalaba, ActiveRainians! My name is Craig Keller and I'm the new kid on the block here at ActiveRain. Today is my first day as the new Visual Designer. I am a designer, which almost guarantees that I have the writing skills of a well-trained chimpanzee... This is especially true in my case. Anyhow, I have been designing websites and user interfaces for 9 years; the last 3 1/2 as a self-employed freelancer. I learned how to use Photoshop when still had a version number on the box (version 6.0 to be exact). I started out designing graphics as a hobby, mostly horrific photo montages with graffiti fonts and superfluous use of the "Satin" Blending Option. It was horrible, but I didnt think so at the time. Gradually my work stopped inducing seizures, and became less and less frightening to small children. Once I had a grasp on the principles, I took it and ran. I am a student of my craft, this is what I do for fun, this is my passion, this is my life's purpose...
So, I've been sitting here for the last 45 minutes staring blankly at the screen, re-reading and re-writing the same paragraph over and over. I think what I'd like to do is do a little sharing with you; because after all, sharing is caring and what I care about most as a designer is the user. I'd like to begin our little sharing pow-wow by talking about what I love in design for the web. I love clean user interfaces, plain and simple. To me, there is nothing quite like a clean user interface with tasteful use of white space, pixel perfect graphics with attention paid to details like texture, layout, and lighting. I am also a firm believer in usability; I pride myself on my ability to design interaction. I look at every interface that I design from a user's perspective not just before deploying it, but from the get-go... im talking when im sketching it out in my canson notebook. I HATE visiting websites that pay little to no attention to how a user will interact with their site. It is crazy to me. Like when a website tells me how to interact with their site in a way that isn't logical, or forces me to click excessively to achieve a simple task (UGGGHHHH). Because I HATEEE poor interaction design so much, I make sure to think through each and every design thoroughly to make it as elegant, and efficient as it can possibly be. I am very passionate about my work, and I am very excited to be here at ActiveRain and given a chance to share my work with you.
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