Thursday, July 22, 2010

Welcome, Jeff!

Lately it seems we have a big announcement to make every day at reddit, but today is particularly special. Paradox, (a.k.a. paradox460, or "Jeff" if you're not into that whole "Internet" thing) has done a lot of great work for us in the past, including designing our new mobile version and helping run our IRC channel. Also, unlike the rest of us, he's actually good at writing CSS and doing webpage layout. So we're proud to announce that as of today, we're bringing him on as a design consultant and member of the staff!

Jeff telecommutes most of the time, and works strange hours, but he already has a full plate of projects, and small changes should start to flow in over the next few months. No, it won't be turning into a recursive rounded corner and gradient nightmare, but it might become a bit prettier. And if there are any major changes, we'll see what we can do about providing options for those of you who prefer it ugly.

Jeff does most of his design / layout / testing in live CSS, as opposed to making templates and designs in Photoshop. All of mobile reddit was built this way. What's that mean? Well, instead of having to make the sketches in Photoshop, and then convert them to CSS / HTML / Javascript, he skips that whole first step. He starts with CSS / HTML / Javascript, and he ends with it. It's like having a manual transmission on your website.

Jeff is also talented with Illustrator (which used to be kn0thing's job), so expect to see some new art around the site. His first duty was to draw his own avatar.

Not bad, Paradox. Not bad.
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