I lead the team at DLS Design, creating websites and branding for businesses. My greatest satisfaction is in seeing our clients get the best possible version of the website and other communication tools they imagined.
I’m very good at explaining, and then executing, complex design projects. Contact me with your web questions. I’ll work confidentially with my team to create a world-class website and brand image for you, under a tight deadline if need be.
I have extensive experience with web design: HTML, CSS, PHP and the WordPress platform. I am well-versed in website security; implementing https on websites; plugin compatibility and troubleshooting; and ADA compliance.
As a graphic designer, I have won over 20 national awards, shared with my team, including at the American Graphic Design Awards, for websites, logos, book jackets and more.
I have substantial expertise handling print projects as well. Besides creating the design, this includes soliciting bid specs and estimates from printers. If you add printing to your project, you’ll know you’re in good hands.
I work with clients’ IT consultants and domain registrars, assisting businesses with the registration of web domains. I speak their language, and can help you untangle your web problems.
Background
Growing up, I built, and took things apart. My parents let me dissect old toasters, and bought me the Rocket Launcher Erector Set, which I deployed as a series of mini Verrazano Bridges, the dominant civic feature of our Bay Ridge neighborhood. I spent summers copying action panels from Marvel comics — Spiderman, X-Men, Thor. Of course.
One Saturday morning a year or two after college, following an early, unsatisfactory foray into magazine editing, I experienced the revelation that I should become a graphic designer. Nights on Manhattan subways, I saw the writing on the wall: posters from the School of Visual Art exhorting that “To Be Good is Not Enough … When You Dream of Being Great”. I took the chance.
Working freelance and in my own small business, I came to design brochures, annual reports, industrial advertising and magazine marketing. Five years in, I was designing for Rolling Stone magazine, and other high-profile clients, teaching myself Basic on an Atari 1200XL computer… until the Mac came along. Fast forward, and I was one of the first designers to build a book of web design clients, which I continue to grow to this day.
Influences
I favored designers whose output had the ability to sum up the essence of a company or product, and tried to emulate them. Here are three who accomplished this feat in their particular realm.
Any designer working for businesses will come to know the work of Paul Rand, who, in a way, invented the profession in its modern form. Imitating Rand’s work will lead, hopefully, to designing logos of concision that instantly convey the flavor of the client’s business. Rand designed the logos for IBM, UPS, Next computers and many more. When he passed away, we created a memorial website and received a touching letter from his widow Marion Rand.
At SVA my favorite class was the lettering course of Ed Benguiat. It seemed as if every important typeface was being designed by him, as his fonts epitomized the mood of his era. Years later I reached out to Ed and we had several great phone calls and emails, before he passed away in 2020.
British designer Nigel Holmes was another favorite whose icons I studied from afar, spending countless hours trying to equal. With a few small shapes and lines he could tell a whole story.
At home
I spend quality, and quantity-time with my family. Every year I complete over 100 bike rides. And many evenings I fire up a knockoff Fender guitar and blast a set of rock classics.
How can I help you? Contact me here.
Headshot by Bradley Lau.