An online web portfolio for

ANDREW YOLLAND

bon vivant & junior dev extraordinaire

Purpose

My name is Andrew: I engineer delight.

In the past I've engineered delight on the stage, in the street, on tabletops, and in bars. I am now transitioning skills into the world of web development. Currently, my goal is to engineer delight in the browser. I am currently seeking employment at a company where my skills and viewpoint can be put to good work. A company that needs to make sure their audience is engaged.

I thrive best when I can make something that surprises, that entertains, that challenges: Something delightful. Maybe dreadful. Maybe both. Delight can be a powerful tool: use it to get people's attention, to win people to your side, or to craft a memorable experience. Because you're building an experience and not an object, working in this paradigm does not require a static set of skills: instead it demands flexibility and a sense of context. Engineering delight is as much a reductive process as an additive: sometimes it simply means making sure you are staying out of your audience's way.

TL;DR: I'm looking for a company that values delight as I do, and has use for my unique perspective and skill crafting experiences.

Credentials

I am a recent graduate of Omaha Code School, an intensive program designed to "turn beginners into hire-able web developers in 12 weeks." The course focuses on full-stack web-development, and covers Ruby on Rails, Javascript, HTML/CSS, as well as touching on other languages and frameworks. While I have a passion for crafting visuals and user experiences, I am equally comfortable working in Ruby logic as I am pushing divs around a window.

  • Take-away: I'm an extremely fast-learner, and I have a foundation of both front-end and back-end web skills.

    • I spent 8 years working with BlueBarn's Witching Hour, a non-traditional theatre ensemble here in Omaha. We made devised theatre, meaning we took each show from a blank slate to production, usually in about 3 months time. Shows were often not on-stage and usually had a strong visual component. I wore many hats there, from writer, director, visual designer, and communications director. I've had to dabble in print design, copy-writing, branding, run social media campaigns. In 2014 I was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council for my playwriting I did while with Witching Hour.

  • Take-away: I live and breathe collaboration, am comfortable with tight deadlines, and bring a broad skill set to any project.

    • WEB DEV EXAMPLES

    The Duck Pond
    A database of fictional ducks. Designed for hypothetical duck enthusiasts.
    Project made using Rails, and Javascript. Used to develop a basic understanding of CRUD operations and password encryption using Rails, and to work on dynamic HTML effects using pure javascript. (Bonus: Click the ducks.) Illustrations not by me.

    Omawho Re-design
    A web tool for helping put faces to names in Omaha's creative community. Visual re-design of an existing website to reduce visual clutter and emphasize usability. Worked on the front-end team to create a visual look that the client was satisfied with. Uses Bootstrap and JQuery for front-end, back-end made in Rails.

    Cat Band Site
    A site-mockup for a band made entirely of placekittens. Emulating features seen on other sites, exploring CSS effects and using jQuery for dynamic effects, and using Sinatra for a simple back-end. Graphical elements made by me.

    Tiny Sprite Tool
    A toy for designing gameboy-era sprite graphics. Uses Sinatra and ActiveRecords to store the sprites in a database.

    Contact / Résumé

    (If you hate mailto links like me, you can just copy andrew.yolland@gmail.com)

    about this site

    This site was hand-coded in HTML and CSS, using Bootstrap and JQuery.
    Graphics were liberally pilfered from around the web and edited/modified by me.
    Of particular help were Lost & Taken, Radu Lucian, and Max Textures.
    Please don't antagonize the Hodag.