About me

My name is Dana and I live in Miami, Florida. I'm a designer and front-end developer with over 19 years of experience, and former co-founder of Aurous Group.

I began my career in 2006 designing as a hobby, then expanded into web development to make design alive as a website.

Since I handle both design and front-end development, most projects don't require clients to hire multiple agencies, saving the time, cost and complexity.

Design Philosophy

I believe that designers have to understand the basic concept of back-end development process to smoothen the process for more complex projects.

My focus is the design quality, usability and conversion. I apply my experience on user behavior to guide visitors from viewing to clicking, engaging or purchasing. The visitors should have easy experience using the website or app.

Design Services

I specialize in:

I stay up to date with modern design and coding technology by regularly reading newsletters, articles, case studies, and publications.

Software:

My program of choice is Figma for web design, app design, logos, branding, and UI systems.

I used to work with Adobe Photoshop for wide range of design needs for many years before Figma.

I use Adobe InDesign for presentations, documents and guidelines.

I use JetBrains Webstorm and GitHub for web development.

Web Development

I write clean, modern HTML5, CSS3, using SCSS/SASS for maintainable styling. I commonly use Bootstrap as a base framework and customize it as needed. I'm comfortable with terminal, running NodeJS and editing JavaScript and React.

I also build themes for WordPress, set up and create an eCommerce site using Woocommerce. I'm comfortable editing PHP when required. WordPress is useful for clients who want to manage their own content or run an online store.

I continuously optimize my templates and workflow to reduce costs, improve efficiency and deliver high quality results.

Programming & Platforms:

Clients & Experience

I work remotely with several long-term clients on larger, ongoing projects, while occasionally taking on new work.

I've worked with companies such as Delta Airlines, Millers Brewing Company, Microsoft, Yahoo! University of Houston, Payday A/S and some other corporate clients. I've also contributed on a few open-source projects, most have gained significant attention online.

My Contribution to Open Source

I actively contribute to the community by writing tutorials and sharing repositories on GitHub to help other developers learn and grow.

I've written a gulp tutorial "How to start using Gulp in minutes" for developers who want to start using Gulp and I made a Bootstrap + Gulp.js starter template kit "SCSS Bootstrap starter kit" for developers pers who want a base framework to quickly start their new projects.

Teaching

I’ve mentored and trained students in web design and front-end development. One of my most successful student was able to relocate to the country of his dream after 3 years of teaching. He's now a CTO as his main job and starting to like Java + Kotlin. I wrote a blog about my teaching experience.