Profiles

Low-res design, open water, chess, graffiti

I began working with WP very early on (2006?), inspired by a student who was using it to build a community site. The desire to empower folks to manage their own content on the web had long felt out of reach. But here was a free, accessible solution. I dove in, learning everything I could about the inner workings of the project.
In 2008, I learned about a “contest” where anyone could submit icons that would be used in v.2.7’s overhauled UI. I entered it, and my set was chosen!
I became immersed in the Design community. For a while, I was listed as a “Core Designer” on the wp.org about page. Over the next few years, an idea grew that WP should be “flattened”; the UI should shed the shine and polish of skeuomorphism and other visual trends that pervaded earlier on. A proposal was made to build an icon font, containing vector-based, flat icons that were scalable and styleable, overcoming the limitations of bitmap sprites. The result was Dashicons, and I took the lead on building the system for the new iconography. The team designed hundreds of icons. The enhancement was rolled out in v.3.8, and continue to be a part of WP to this day in 2025. It’s a project that I’m incredibly proud of and grateful to have been involved with.