Let’s get to know you first. Tell us about yourself.
Hi! I’m Charlie Clark - an interactive developer based in Brooklyn, currently working at Domani Studios. I graduated from Parsons in 2012 with a BFA in Graphic Design, but by my senior year I was working almost exclusively on interactive digital projects. Fresh out of school, I started as a web developer intern at Stinkdigital, where I went on to work as a lead developer on a number of award winning projects.
I love writing clever code, experimenting with new web technologies, and challenging myself to make things that are both solidly built and innovative. In my spare time, I love to create more artful personal stuff, like my latest project “The Colors of Twitter” - an interactive data visualization of the use of color on twitter.
Cool, so what’s the story behind your website and its design?
I built a very simple website when I was applying for jobs at the end of school, but after working for a year and learning a bunch of new things, I wanted to have a portfolio site that reflected what I knew. I come from a Flash background, and I love doing cool visual things in Canvas. I came up with the idea for this crazy color-changing pixelated graphic, and decided to use that as a starting point for the rest of my site.
What part of your website is your favourite, and why?
I love my splash page. Some people hate it, and I’ve heard the term “epileptic seizure inducing” thrown around a couple times to describe it, but I like the fact that its startling and unusual.
Is there anything you wish you knew when you first started building your website?
When I first built the site, I built it all using Handlebars - a client side templating library. I later went back and changed all the templating to happen server-side in PHP, which sped up the rendering of the site and made it more SEO friendly.
Technologies, languages, frameworks, or libraries?
HTML5 Canvas for my splash page, Raphael SVG for my icons and the color-changing image in the about section, Tweenlite for smoother animation. I also use Grunt to compile my LESS and minify my javascript.
Any upcoming changes we should look out for?
I’ll be adding a bunch of new projects that I’m finishing up right now, so check back often :)
