Design48 is the online portfolio of work I have done for a number of corporations over my long career in Silicon Valley.
I have also used the titles Designstudio8 and Thetawaves to differentiate my webdesign from my graphic work, and my corporate work from my creative work. But I find it harder than ever to keep these things in separate categories. These days, visual designers are expected to do it all, including write the cross-browser code. Every company has a website, and it is an ever more important part of their business. Silicon Valley has re-invented itself for the internet. Cisco is now the mothership, as Lockheed was in the 20th century. (But I ask you, what would Cisco be if DARPAnet had not been released to the public domain?) You can read more about my background and view a previous version of my site by going here: About Design48.

A Brief History of Graphic Design: The field of graphic design was forever changed by the invention of the personal computer. For at least a century, graphic design was done on a drafting table. Printing production processes changed very slowly. Then everything changed quickly in the mid-80's with the introduction of the PC. Almost overnight, everyone was sitting at a computer, learning how to type as well as the expert typists we all used to depend upon. Illustrators had to learn to use the mouse with as much dexterity as a pen or pencil. The ubiquitous x-acto knife was replaced with virtual "cut and paste." Commercial art was the process of making it "camera ready." What used to be called commercial art, including graphic design, is now almost exclusively produced on a computer with software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and InDesign. A certain amount of planning and preliminary thought processes are still done with pencil and paper, but most of the production process is done with software. Software companies like Adobe and Macromedia grew out of the computer revolution. Then things changed drastically again with the introduction of the internet. Suddenly, graphic designers had to learn HTML. I hand-coded this site with XHTML, CSS, javascript, and Photoshop.

Long before the DaVinci Code became a ubiquitous part of popular culture, I thought that DaVinci was a great symbol for the webdesigner, because he was both an engineer and an artist. The web has opened up a whole new world for graphic designers, including me. I have been a fulltime webdesigner since 1999, bringing years of computer graphics experience to the web. I handcode HTML (XHTML) and am very familiar with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). I prefer to hand code, but I can also use any of the WYSIWYG tools, such as Dreamweaver. I find the developers toolbars for both IE and Firefox very handy. I have worked with various content and version management systems, such as Teamsite, Blue Martini, and Accurev. I also design Flash websites. (See the links above and below on this page.)

Right-brain vs Left-brain

As soon as the internet appeared in the private sector, software companies responded to the need for web tools, and web designers and developers have had to learn to use them. Moreover, because the web is such a visual medium, involving not only technical expertise, but also esthetic sensibilities, software engineers (the "left-brainers") have had to move to the right, towards the visual designers' world, and the "right-brainers" have had to move to the left, and get involved in the functionality part of design. Industrial designers have done this in the past, but only since the web have graphic designers had to be technicians. Now it seems that those most in demand are the people who are both right-brainers and left-brainers. No wonder Leonardo DaVinci is more popular than ever!