I believe the web should be accessible, readable, and usable, and that design is most beautiful when it calls attention to its content instead of itself. To those ends, in design I prioritize responsive layouts and precise typography, and in front-end development I emphasize progressive enrichment — separating structure, style, and interaction — with semantic markup, CSS-based layouts, and unobtrusive JavaScript.
I enjoy working with diverse teams to build things that can make people’s lives better: internal tools, enterprise and educational software, informational websites, and anything in between.
I work as a software engineer at Transform, so my free time is somewhat limited — but feel free to hit me up by way of social media, etc., if you think I can be of help or if you just want to chat!
A tool for making assumptions.
My wife’s long-running blog, soon to have a design that doesn’t feel like it was made in the early aughts (even though it was).
I worked with the Learning Services division to migrate from a legacy PHP stack to one that leverages Next.js, GraphQL, and Styled Components, including contributions on a company-wide component library. I also helped drive company-wide efforts on making all Chegg products more accessible (and compliant with WCAG 2.1 level AA).
Apr. 2018 – July 2021
Feature enhancements using CSS, React, and Draft.js, including a mechanism for creating and editing tabular data.
Feb. 2018
Facebook’s marketing and scaled education site for advertisers. I built, iterated on, and maintained the previous version and much of the code behind the current version.
Feb. 2013 – June 2015
A long-running series for Typedia, written almost entirely by Grant Hutchinson and me.
July 2010 – Dec. 2013
What had languished at this URL before this; note that contact info, etc., is woefully out of date. (You can reach me on various social media platforms or by emailing “erik” at this domain.)
Courses I taught at Loyola University Chicago; subject matter includes composition, Shakespeare, and nature in literature.
Aug. 2003 – Dec. 2007
A set of hypertext experiments related to and a crude digital edition of the “Lazarus” play found in the Towneley manuscript.
Apr. 2004 – Feb. 2007
What I imagined would be the start to a series of essays on writing.
Feb. 2007
It has been a while, but I’m always up for talking about accessibility, typography, web development, and a number of other topics.
Find Me Online