Spencer Lavery
Originally a graphic designer, artist and musician - Spencer has firm roots in the creative side of design, though over the past 4 years has cemented himself as an expert in the field of front-end web development. Spencer's designs have won numerous awards and are regularly featured in design showcases around the world.
In his own words
I’m a problem solver. Obviously by that I don’t mean that I’m a hitman (but how cool would that be?), I mean that I fix things. I’m not that great at normal things like socialising and exercising, but finding solutions to problems just fits, it feels natural. Most people look at things and see barriers, reasons that certain outcomes can’t be produced, but when I look at them - provided I’m told which outcomes to look for - I can find it.
Oddly enough this has led me to a career in design. I guess it’s similar in a way. The client wants to communicate something on a level that they themselves don’t understand, and I’m able to. I’ve been pretty successful turning my hand to each of the different types and styles of design, but I’ve settled on web design firstly because it’s so fast-paced (just keeping up with the industry is a full-time job in itself) and secondly because it’s challenging. Every day I’m faced with new problems and called upon for ideas and solutions.
So what do I do?
Some call themselves standards-based designers, some even call themselves CSS developers, I don’t know what to call myself these days - the work I do spans the realms of usability, interface and accessibility consultation, analytics and conversion reporting, hardcore CSS/xHTML standards-based semantic coding, PHP programming, and last but not least at all - designing. And despite being an awesome coder, my designs are far from predictable. Let’s just call me a web expert. I can design sites, build them, and fix them, that’s all that matters.
A lot of the recent design work I’ve done has won awards and been featured on showcase sites, and while it is this area of things that I enjoy the most, I do genuinely love getting my hands dirty with the code too. I also like to speak about my work, and have talked on various podcasts and at local conferences about CSS, design and its intricacies. Some day I hope to finish the book I’m writing and talk at some of the more major events.