The online home of Zoe Mickley GillenwaterAbout
About Zoe
As you've probably figured out by now, this is the personal web site of Zoe Mickley Gillenwater, which is me, of course. I'm one of the those jack of all trades designer types, who likes to get her hands dirty in a variety of different aspects of graphic design and web development. There are a couple things I really excel at, though: standards-based design is my "thing," and I focus on valid code, semantic markup, separation of content and presentation, accessibility in all my projects. What does all that mean? It means I make web sites that are more efficient and user-friendly than the bulk of what's out there, with sleek, professional style to boot.
I originally studied fine art in college, but soon switched to graphic design as my main creative outlet. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication, emphasis in visual communication and multimedia. I really enjoyed my program because I not only learned the how-to of multimedia production, but I learned the principles behind effective mass communication. Every web site has a message, and good graphic design enhances and promotes that message.
I've also gotten to put my journalism training to good use as a partner at CommunityMX, where I regularly write articles and tutorials on a variety of web design topics. I've really enjoyed combining my technical knowledge of web design with my writing skills, and I've discovered how much I enjoy "teaching" others about things I care about and enjoy.
About the Site
I created this site for dual reasons:
- to act as a repository for the things I'm proud of, namely my portfolio of design work and art
- to help people learn about the things I'm passionate about, namely CSS, accessibility, and other web design topics
Hopefully, the site is fulfilling those goals, or will soon enough as the content continues to be fleshed out. If you have any suggestions, you're always welcome to contact me.
The Name
Unfortunately, I have no interesting story to share on the meaning of the site name. I just liked the combination of the two words, so I bought the domain. Sorry to disappoint. Perhaps I subconsciously liked the name because of the water connotation in "surge," since I'm a Pisces and my last name is Gillenwater. That's the best I can come up with.
The Design
The style of this site is reminiscent of art nouveau, particularly Alfons Mucha, one of my favorite artists. If you're interested in how I planned, designed, and built the site, I've written a series of articles on my site creation process for Community MX. These are the ones currently published:
Featured Project
The Walk to School web site is the primary resource material for Walk to School coordinators across the US to plan their annual events. Learn more in the Portfolio section.