Improving collaboration between design and engineering with the power of design systems
Writing
Styling a meter element with CSS and SVG
How to make a fancy rating component.
2024
A look back at 2024.
Halloween
Reflections on my most/least favorite day.
Working
I have over 25 years experience making websites for individual entrepreneurs to large companies and everything in between. I'm currently the Principal Design Systems Engineer at Turquoise Health. I specialize in creating custom CSS frameworks that empower engineering teams to get from concept to production quickly, while writing little to no CSS.
In my spare time, I created Dogs of Dev and 11ty Recipes. I also write a monthly newsletter, Peruvian Idle, about good stuff on screens.
Read more about the work I've done at Provi, Groupon, and elsewhere.
Streaming
I occasionally stream Office Hours, a Q&A and live-coding show about CSS, Design Systems and whatever else I'm currently working on. I also do gaming streams now and then.
Each November I do a 24-hour gaming stream as part of Extra Life Extra Life to raise money for Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.
Speaking
I chatted with Kelly and Adekunle on the Code & Pixels podcast about CSS and design systems.
I joined Jason Lengstorf on Learn with Jason to talk about CSS in design systems. We imagined what my first week of a design systems engineer at LWJ might look like, building a CSS framework and documentation site to support a redesigned show page on Jason's website.
I returned to Frontend Horse for the Halloween Spooktacular, where Alex Trost and I made a Halloween theme for the Frontend Horse website in 15 minutes using only design tokens.
On Some Antics, Ben Myers and I talked about using Hacktober as an opportunity to get into design systems while building a small system ourselves.
I built a basic design system for Frontend Horse and talked to Alex Trost about the process.
I gave a talk at the inaugural Eleventy Meetup called Templating: Eleventy's Superpower, where I demonstrated how to create an Eleventy site in ~10 minutes.
I spoke with Superfriendly's Dan Mall on Get It Out of Your System about how communication is one of the biggest challenges in establishing a design system.
On the Command Z Podcast, I talked to Layshi Curbelo about how design systems help improve collaboration between designers and engineers.
At University of Illinois' WebCon 2019, I gave a talk called Lessons From the Coupon Factory, where I shared the evolution of Groupon's design system.
I love chatting about all things design systems and CSS. I'm available to speak on your podcast, stream or at your conference. Or we can just grab lunch!