Our Crew
Jason Johnson
Lead Software Developer
| Jason is a full-stack designer and developer with a diverse technical skill set, a lifelong passion for design, and a keen awareness of the user experience. As a result, his projects are finely crafted, well designed, intuitive experiences for the user. He has an appetite for the latest technologies, languages and frameworks, a love and respect for the time-tested ones, and the experience to know the best fit for each unique application. |
Background
Jason has always sought to bridge the technical and the aesthetic realms. During his undergraduate education in the 1990's, he studied both engineering and art, while also dabbling in a relatively new technology that involved HTTP and HTML and would eventually power business as we know it today. With the web expanding beyond the academic world, Jason focused his energy on becoming a designer and developer and an active member of the community that was pioneering this new field. Over the past 20 years, this has matured into a career of full-stack craftsmanship.
Jason has directed the development of interactive media with Brandsmith for a decade.
Education
Jason received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tennessee Technological University. At the time, web design and development were too new to be offered in the formal education system. Jason's self-education of early web technologies allowed him to later teach digital art & design, as well as HTML & CSS at multiple colleges. Web development is a fast-developing and continually-evolving field, and staying well versed in the latest technologies, languages, frameworks, and specifications is vital. With his dedication to ongoing learning and exploration, he continues to build his knowledge and skill set daily.
Personal
Jason loves art, music, and nature. He is a gifted oil painter, a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter and a natural outdoorsman; enjoying hiking, camping, traveling, and sailing.
Jason also preserves maritime history through his volunteer work repairing, restoring and maintaining antique wooden boats.
In His Own Words
"Every digital product – web site, application, API, etc. – is a layered system. Each layer must be translated in order to be accessed by the next. Data and content is only as useful as the logic to process and access it, which in turn is only as useful as the interface to control and interact with it. It's very easy and quite common for an application to be built “like a computer thinks,” meaning those lower layers are functional, but there is a disconnect from there to the user. This results in a product which is crude, cryptic, unintuitive, inefficient, and usually unattractive and unpleasant to use. My goal is to build a user interface and user experience that works like people think on top of a robust, flexible, efficient infrastructure. Doing that well – writing the necessary code that marries the two together reliably – is an art and a craft that takes extra time and work in the design and development process, but the resulting product requires less training, less support time, and involves less user frustration. It can be used quickly and effortlessly, which saves countless hours and dollars over its lifetime."