Hi, my name is Shawn!

I have been hanging out on Earth for about 32 years now and have loved every minute. I am based in Northeast Ohio with my beautiful wife, hyperactive dog and a cat that really enjoys sleeping. During the day I design and develop web pages and other types of visual communication. By night I like to take pictures and try to find some time to write content for this or various other sites.

There are a lot of places on the interwebs that you will see the by-line “Pixel Pusher | Code Ninja | Tea Drinker” underneath my name. Sometimes I get questioned on what this means, so let me take a second to explain…

Pixel Pusher: I love photography. I have been working on this craft seriously for over half of my life. I started off with film, but now work exclusively on the digital side. Since digital images are made up of pixels, and I often manipulate these in photoshop after the fact, I thought this term would be a fair description.

Code Ninja: When I made the transition from print to interactive I used Dreamweaver. I quickly realized that using a WYSIWYG editor was both unreliable and imprecise. That realization lead me to become fluent with all of the different coding languages. I poured myself over HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and ActionScript. Somewhere along the line, a co-worker gave me the nickname “Code Ninja” when helping them with a problem and it just stuck. Now to be fair to the purists out there, I do realize that the first two are actually mark-up languages, but really, “Mark-up/Code Ninja” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Tea Drinker: This one should be pretty obvious. I drink tea. I also love coffee; however, quite a few people in the U.S. drink coffee, so saying I am a coffee drinker isn’t really a defining characteristic. That being the case, there really is nothing like a good cup of tea steeped from loose leaves. If you also like tea, you may be interested in my tasting notes on steepster.com

Services I Offer:

Web Site Design and Development:

This is my bread and butter. I can help you with everything from designing a concept that will enhance your brand and get your message to the people to getting that concept online and in front of your viewers. I create visually appealing, standards compliant and accessible sites and am available for hire. My go-to languages are HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP.

Graphic Design:

I have over a decade of experience in visual communication and have created everything from the simple, but important, logo to billboards. I don’t take on many print jobs these days but, it is still something I offer.

WordPress Consulting and Development:

I love WordPress and think it is a great back-end solution for many small to medium sites. Need help getting WordPress up and running on your site? Want to talk about why you should or shouldn’t use WordPress? Need a custom theme built so that you can stand out from the crowd? Contact me today!

Photography:

I specialize in creating compelling images that either capture reality in a slightly different way or tell a story. Generally speaking, I lean more towards fine art photography, however I have been know to venture into the commercial realm to shoot some products or create a unique portrait.

Web Video:

This is the future of new media. Currently I am working on creating podcasts and screencasts focused on web design techniques. I can also help you get your message out in this new medium.

Interactive Design:

I enjoy creating user interfaces and other multi-media projects. Maybe I can help with your project…