A Bit About Brandon

Design, Technology, and Systems

I am a Front-End Engineer and Designer with a focus on Enterprise Design Systems - sometimes this is called a Creative Technologist, Designer Engineer, or Design System Engineer.

I have over 20 years of experience working with different digital and traditional mediums, but the web is the most awesome of them all. I have worked from small shops, to agencies, to leading a team of engineers in the Fortune 500.

In recent years I have found myself moving more towards leadership and management, which is a welcome and appropriate change at this moment in my career. I adore my ability to tinker, build, and design with my own hands and expertise yet I bubble with glee when positioned to help others create and spend time on crafting what they're proud to put their signature on.

At my core I am a nerd for design, technology, and the systems they support. I struggle to call myself a designer or a developer, so these days I go with Design Technologist. For a better idea of why I love to work in Design Systems, I've included a few thoughts below:

Why Design Technologist Over The Other Titles

I like to build and explore solutions using technology as my tool and design as my guide. Design shows up in each step of the process in different ways, but the focus is on the medium of deliver, technology.

On a more personal note, I maintain that titles which include Engineer and Architect should remain in fields that require licensing or other form of validation of skills. We are not "accepting tech-debt" when building bridges (and if we are, please don't tell me) like we do when we accept issues in digital technology codebases and the pipelines that support them.

Why Design Systems, Design Infrastructure, and Design Workflows

I am a person with ADHD, this gives me a huge appreciation for staying in the "flow-state" of work. This has turned into one of my main motivations in helping to deliver solutions for designers and developers so the precious time and energy they're giving to their work can be spent on the work they find interesting and motivating.

When I discovered Design Systems, everything "clicked." Creating a set of tools, guidelines, and supporting infrastructure to make other people feel like they have superpowers? What a dream.

This has led to the professional equivalent of hyper-focus. I have opinions on Design Systems, Design Infrastructure, and how companies and organizations can get the most out of them - and when they're not worth the squeeze.

Strong Opinions, Loosely Held

All of this work is people focused. With that in mind, there is a level of flexibility, empathy, and a willingness to humbly change your viewpoints. Design System work is a great fit for the Player-Coach archetype. Having an intuition of how the work gets done, how people prefer to get the work done, how your decisions will scale in different arenas, and knowing how to listen for all of these is a skillset I'd look for to spot those who will be successful in Design System work.

Innovation and Visionaries Look Different

Design Systems are a tool focused on timing. Centralizing efforts at the right time, spotting emerging patterns early, scaling adoption overtime, and maintaining momentum to ship updates that matter in a predictable way.

Being a pattern matching chameleon is a super-power in the Design System space. In most workspaces, innovation in design is not coming from the Design System. The Design System is normally playing "catch-up" with the platform or product teams. However, delivering patterns and solutions that cranks the reusability of a design solution to 11 and makes it more useful for more applications is where your innovation will shine.

In my opinion, the Developers and Design Technologists are closer to the traditional innovation and visionary work than those on focused on the design solutions. This is not an opinion that is shaping which work is more important or more impactful, but what type of people do you want in these roles to get the most out of your Design System.

A Design Technologist or Developer that can understand how to abstract the needs and patterns of the design solutions and make them useful tools for those creating them for use on the targeted platforms are game changers. The people I want to work with on a Design System development team are able to connect the pieces between how designers will use the design system, how developers will understand the designers' intentions, and how to squeeze even more out of the systems with an eye towards business goals, accessibility, and quality.

Since every business is going to be structured differently as related to people, orgs, tools, and priorities, there are abundant opportunities for innovative work as Design Technologists.

Teaching For The Web

Beyond my work in the professional space, I also teach and mentor students as an Instructor at Full Sail University. This role has always been one of my favorites. For over 15 years I have been paid to talk nerd stuff with other nerds. These students always challenge me to stick with the basics, keep me on my toes for what those entering the industry expect, and to always keep an emphatic ear for all levels of professionals.

I have had the privilege to write and delivery curriculum across a broad spectrum of the web industry. From the basics of HTML and CSS, understanding the complexities of network systems and servers, advanced topics of front-end development, the history of the web and our industry, to our final project that is a capstone of all the knowledge the students have gained and their chance to build something to launch their career upon. Now with AI established, for better or worse, we're about to go through an evolution of what it means to be a Web Development degree. I'm more excited than scared about the possibilities AI brings, but trying to predict what it will look like in 5 years is the same as trying to predict the impact of the internet in 1999.

More Personal, Life Away From The Screen

Everything above is in service of my family and providing the potential for excitement, awe, and gratefulness for the time we are given together. I am a husband, father, and cat-dad first before I am a Design Technologist or whatever current professional title I hold.

I am an optimist to a fault, will become emotional over great movies and moments of superb cinematography, and will absolutely talk your ear off about the hidden world of amazing design you may not see around you every day.

If you've ever driven on Disney World resort properties, have you ever noticed how the physical form of the road signage will either lean or point in the direction you'll be going if you need to follow those roads? Pretty neat solution for an area that's likely to have many international visitors who may not understand what "Next Exit" or "Left Exit" may mean.

You will now find me on my Peloton near daily, bringing my old power-building routine back into my life, and trying to maintain my physical and mental energy to keep up with the play time our youngest demands.

A good LEGO set brings a nice zen-like calm to life, yes I am a follow-the-instructions-and-keep-it-together LEGO-dad now. There's a ton of "free-play" LEGO in the house for the kids, don't worry. I used to plant myself down for time with the Playstation, but there's less of that these days. When I used to play regularly it was Fallout 4, God of War, Battlefield 1, Rocket League, MLB The Show, and FIFA. We're a theme park and nerd-culture family, so I am happy to speak the language of Star Wars, Marvel, Doctor Who, Ender's Game, and plenty more.

I am also now a landscape for the birds guy. Adding bird bathes to our property with wild-flowers nearby to attract more insects and butterflies nearby has been a small delight. Love the sounds of our Ground Doves, Blue Jays, Finches, and Cardinals that I now get to see on the regular.

Speaking of being that guy, I am also a big car guy. I currently have in my driveway a 2005 Suburban Z71 and a 2016 VW GTI with a manual transmission. I enjoy the experience, engineering, and design involved in all aspects of the automotive world. In another timeline I'm an automotive designer who also drives rally-cross for fun.