How this online portfolio service pivoted to donate money to designers in need

Team Well Crafted, Keith and Jana Harper

In 2011, husband-and-wife duo Keith and Jana Harper — both Seattleites — developed Well Crafted, a customizable online portfolio where designers could display their work. The inspiration hit Keith when he became frustrated with manually updating his portfolio time and again. With Jana as the developer and Keith as the designer, the team of two set… Read More…

How this design geek’s toilet analogy fell flat in a 2003 pitch to Bill Gates

GeekWire calendar shoot

We love hearing old stories about how Bill Gates operated at Microsoft, in part because the software titan has reshaped his image so much in the past few years. Today, many perceive Gates as a leading philanthropist, so you can sometimes forget that the billionaire was first and foremost a hard-charging software geek and businessman… Read More…

Comedy: When developers and designers try to communicate

hive

Do you see yourself in this video? The recent HIVE 2011 design conference in Redmond opened with an exclusive skit by Charles, a Seattle-based sketch comedy duo, spotlighting the classic communication barrier between technology developers and designers. The video was just recently posted online. The conference focused on the value of design in technology. See the… Read More…

First-time conference aims to bridge tech and design in Seattle region

Jenny Lam

A grassroots initiative to improve the connections among technology companies, user-experience specialists and designers in the Seattle region has spawned a new conference called HIVE 2011, to be held next month on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. GeekWire talked about plans for the conference today with Jenny Lam, co-founder at Jackson Fish Market and a former Microsoft Windows… Read More…