I create beautiful responsive websites, and Yes, I am a UX geek

What is UX?

Glad you asked. User Experience Design (UX or UXD for short) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.

I am Tom Garland, Web Designer, Developer, Artist.

I find Passion where others only see code.

Responsive Design

Is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).

HTML5/CSS3 Dev

HTML5 was developed to solve some of the compatibility problems of HTML4. In previous versions of HTML, web pages required proprietary plugins and APIs. HTML5 provides one common interface to make loading elements easier, like embedding videos and importing maps.

PHP MySQL

PHP is the most popular scripting language for web development. It is free, open source and server-side (the code is executed on the server). MySQL is a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL).

“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.”

-Roy H. Williams

My Skills

Knowledge IS power of course, but in the world of webdesign, graceful form and inspiration are tenement as well.

Programming Skills

It takes knowledge, smart work, and dedication to make great ideas come to life. I have been helping make great ideas happen for the past 18 years and am always ready for new challenges.

HTML5
90% Complete
CSS/CC3
85% Complete
JavaScript
70% Complete
PHP/MySQL
95% Complete

Designing Skills

Problem solving is not always about sitting in a board room talking about the way things should be done. I have a strong background in UI design which allows me to think on my feet and act upon it.

Photoshop
90% Complete
Illustrator
80% Complete
Indesign
75% Complete

Professional Experience

Not my complete body of work. Just some that I enjoyed working on or were significant in some way.

Now 2015
  • Church Redesign
  • JPL is a media intensive site with a LOT of embedded video and images. I am currently creating all the back-end database management tools to help administrators best meet the needs of the site’s users. There are plans to further increase traffic to the site by adding web apps that will help on-the-go members follow along with group bible studies online and entertainment apps for the kids.

  • Original Site
  • 06/19/2015

  • Association Management Site
  • This site manages 7 different Associations. Each has hundreds, if not thousands of members. Users can track membership designations, take payments, issue membership cards, keeps track of account information and administrative notes. There are functions to print out renewal letters and thank you cards as well and many other association reports and documents.

  • Dashboard Page
  • 06/04/2015

Mar 2014
  • First 100% AWS Site
  • This site was done using Amazon Web Services. I first thought it would be expensive to run a full webserver off the Amazon cloud, but it was surprizingly cheap, fast, and reliable.

  • 03/10/2014

  • Porter Valley Software Redesign
  • The original site (See below) was done using Microsoft's VB.NET framework. It was slower than it should be, a little too "blocky" and had the look and feel of a Windows XP™ application.

    So I redesigned it! I transfered the site to a linux server, used a Bootstrap CSS3 framwork, added a MySQL database reference with a ton of functionality.

  • Original Site
  • 03/30/2014

May 12 - 13
  • Differencing of Opinion.
  • With this customer, meeting their needs was challenging. I designed and redesigned many times, trying to find the look and feel the customer wanted. What made it challenging was that the customer didn't have a clear picture of what they wanted from a website. They also wanted a plainer, less "Complimentary Color" site. I had to understand that meeting the customer's needs meant delivering what the customer wanted, not what I thought they should have.

    My First Design for this Customer
  • 06/19/2013

  • Association Site Redesign
  • This site is designed to help people locate and qualified and certified home inspectors in a given state. I was asked to give the site a new look and tie it to a large database of inspectors.

    Original Site
  • 06/19/2013

Aug 08 - 10
  • First Responsive Site
  • Even though MyDogbeys.com has been taken down, I really enjoyed making this site. It was my first attempt at a responsive design that would work well with mobile devices. I decided to do this cite Pro bono as I was learning a new skill set and didn't feel I should bill the customer for the opertunity to learn.

  • 06/19/2015

  • First eCommerce and Project Management Site
  • I loved working on this site. only about 30% of what I did was visible to the public. The rest was behind the scenes work setting up a custom Content Management System (CMS)

  • 06/04/2015

Jun 02-08
  • First 100% CSS Driven Site
  • Look Mom, No Tables! Up until now all my sites relied heavily on tables to position the page elements. This forged me to chop up images and stick them in little boxes. This worked for the most part but forced browsers to make a lot of calls to load images and when resized would often mis-align images.

  • 11/01/2008

  • First ALL FLASH site
  • Huge leaps forward in design. Problem was that at the time, search engines like Google and Yahoo could not properly index flash pages so were unable to rank them. Sites like this always got pushed to the bottom of search results. But they looked cool at least.

  • 06/11/2002

Oct 1997
  • First Paying Gig
  • TruSolutions Inc. was my very first professional website. In 1997 there was a small movement away from the animated GIFS and presenting a cleaner, "Printed Adversisement" kind of look. It still used frames and tables as CSS hadn't really gained in use. Still primitive looking but better than the This site or the Original Site.

  • 11/27/1997

  • Created first website
  • So Ugly! The Internet was still relatively new, and not many people had access to it or knew how to use it. My goal was to simply create a site that my friends and I could post our Video Game artwork.

  • 10/03/1997

Portfolio Examples

In addition to web design, I also do a lot of Logos and Custom Art for people. Here are a few examples.

Drop Us a Line!

Thank you for Checking out my Website. If you would like to get into contact with me, please fill out the form below.

What Color is the top Menu Bar?

Address:

Garland Computing
Palm Desert, CA 92211 USA

Phone:

(760) 650-2212