About Me

Hi, I'm Jenna. I'm a web designer, front end developer, and photographer based in the New England area. I also bartend and sew ballgowns, sometimes historically.

I've got nearly a decade of professional web experience under my belt. I've been present for two-thirds of its lifespan and I remember when advertisements were a duck hunt Flash game that downloaded a virus if you clicked on it. I also remember being able to look up a recipe on my phone without being bombarded with advertisements to the point of uselessness. I am a strong advocate for the usage of ad blockers on both a device and network level. I believe in clean, private, and accessible design free of aggressive marketing and tracking.

I am firmly against the aggressive push of generative AI into online spaces. While AI has long had its place in generative tools like Photoshop's Fill function, its usefulness does not extend much further without becoming a database of plagiarized work that ravages the environment. I posit that AI chatbots are a waste of resources that detract from sensical communication, circumvent necessary skillbuilding, and develop a workforce that cannot think critically. The singular use of artifical intelligence on this website is the usage of the Fill tool to extend the aspect ratio of the first photo on the homepage.

The majority of my work is at a university and government level; I provide refreshing designs for often-stale web environments with a keen eye to accessibility and legal guidelines. In my work, I primarily focus on adding room to breathe and process information by prioritizing visual hierarchy and use of white space.

Credentials

It all started by following the Multimedia Communications track at Blackstone Valley Tech, where I learned of my interest in web design and my distaste of illustration. From there, I attended Massachusetts Bay Community College and graduated with an A.S. in Computer Information Systems, a certificate in Web Design, and a certificate in Cyber Security. I'm also pursing accessibility certification through WCAG and a Front End Web Developer certificate for Drupal through Acquia.

Right now, I can confidently write HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Bootstrap, PHP, SQL, and a bit of jQuery, Java, and Python. I primarily work in Drupal these days, so I can edit Twig and YAML files when spinning up a theme, but I'm also intimately familiar with managing raw HTML through FTP.