Cynthia (Cindy) Gamel

WordPress Engineer, User Experience Designer

Where I have been:

A self-taught coder out of art school, I started my web design career over 20 years ago working with a corporate publishing company, and then made my way to a small marketing agency. At this time, my work was a 50-50 split of design and code. I worked on everything from wireframes to full Photoshop mockups, to building custom WordPress themes. From there I moved to another small but rapidly growing advertising agency.

In 2015 I started my own e-commerce business, which eventually turned into a brick & mortar gift shop in Denver from 2017-2019 and online until 2021. Since then, I have been building my freelance clientele, brushing up on skills, and generally having fun with building websites!

Where I am headed:

Embracing inclusive design, user experience, and accessibility. My ideal project would involve wire-framing, rapid prototyping, some end user visual design, meeting accessibility/web standards and going beyond the basic requirements.

I am looking for a socially and/or environmentally conscious group to work with. I would like to work with clients who are forward thinking and place importance on meeting the needs of all users.

Notes About This Website

I designed and built this site in 2021, and it remains an in-progress adventure. It is hand-coded HTML and SASS (SCSS), and the design comes from a combination of working in Figma, and the browser. I use Visual Studio Code to write in, and flip between Chrome and Firefox for testing. I did not write the lightbox jQuery script on the gallery pages; that is borrowed from Duncan McDougall though I updated it slightly for accessibility purposes. The Blog portion is built in Wordpress for ease of updating, though I matched the look and feel to the hand-coded pages.

I use the WAVE accessibility checking tool. The Andika font used in the body copy was chosen for it’s legibility and might be helpful for those experiencing impaired vision or dyslexia. I am currently in the midst of completing an edX Web Accessibility course.