Matt Ward

Designer / Developer / Writer

Hello there! I'm a designer, front-end developer and writer, all rolled into one. I've worked in both web and print, and love applying my knowledge, critical thinking and expertise to help craft amazing user experiences on the web.

This CV/portfolio summarizes my professional experience and collects some of my best work.

(skip to portfolio)

Skills & Proficiencies

Design

Development

Tools

Writing

Languages

* Completed 12 years of Ontario's French Immersion program. I still consider myself proficient at reading, but do not speak as well as I once did.

Experience

Highland Marketing

Creative Director

2006-Present

As Creative Director at Highland Marketing, my primary responsibilities have included the design and development of marketing collateral, both print and digital, for clients and internal promotion. I have also worked at developing a suite of WordPress plugins for personalized web marketing.

Echo Enduring Media

Creative Lead

2009-Present

As a part-time independent freelance designer, developer and writer, I've had the opportunity to work with incredible people from all over the world, designing logos, deploying websites and contributing tutorials and articles to the design community.

Accomplishments

Smashing Book 2

Co-Author

Together with Alexander Charchar, I co-authored Chapter 1 of The Smashing Book 2, entitled "The Principles of Good Graphic Design."

Survd App

Designer & Developer

Designed and developed Survd, a small, self-hosted application that allows users to create and deploy simple surveys to their websites. This application has not been in active development for a number of years now.

Personalized Web Marketing

Developer

Developed a suite of proprietary WordPress plugins for Highland Marketing, which allows for the creation of personalized pages, based on contact data that is maintained through the WordPress admin.

Education

Wilfrid Laurier University

M.A., English Literature

2005-2006

Completed an 8 month Master's program through intensive course work, helping me to further refine skills in critical thinking, research, analysis, teaching, time management and independent study.

Wilfrid Laurier University

B.A., English Literature

2001-2005

Completed a standard 4-year honours program, studying a broad range of texts, with a special focus on contemporary fiction. This undergraduate program helped me develop skills in critical thinking, analysis and research, all of which have served me well as a designer, developer and writer. I graduated with distinction and a minor in Religion & Culture.

Volunteer Experience

Board Member

Central Pentecostal Church

2014-present

Was elected to this board by the church membership. Duties involve assisting in providing guidance in the direction of the church, as well as input on financial concerns. I have also served as a member of the policy review committee.

Youth Leader

Central Pentecostal Church

2007-2014

Spent time just hanging out with youth, giving guidance and structure to events and pouring into their lives. I also lead worship at a number of Friday night services.

Personal Interests

Brill Themes Website Design

Originally, Brill Themes was a small WordPress marketplace with a modest collection of premium themes. My client purchased the site from its original owner and, finding that the existing themes were not selling as well as he had hoped, he decided to change the direction of the site entirely.

He elected to keep the marketplace feel, but to turn the site into a curated collection of some of the best WordPress themes available across the Web.

My role was to create a new design that would help showcase the themes, while providing detailed categorization and search options to help users find the perfect theme.

A screenshot of the Brill Themes home page.

I started the design with the homepage, creating a simple, responsive grid, with rows ranging from 1 to 4 items, depending on the width of the viewport. With this in mind, I set the number of items per page to 12, allowing for evenly distributed rows in all displays.

Next, I created a custom post type for themes, complete with custom taxonomies for categorizing themes by marketplace, features, categories and tags. I then designed single pages for the themes, showcasing all of the details and providing further opportunity to view a demo or purchase the theme.

A screenshot of a single page on Brill Themes.

With all of the different taxonomies being rolled out on this site, we also needed to allow users to refine their searches by marketplaces, features and categories. Because each theme was saved as a custom post type, this functionality was achieved through a custom implementation of the Advanced WP Query Search Filter plugin.

A screenshot of the Brill Themes search area.