TL/DR
As a designer with over 20 years of experience, I’d like to make it easier for people find me and my work. I hope this blog allows me to connect with like-minded people and to share my knowledge.
LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF
Hi there! Welcome to my first blog post!
If you don’t know who I am, my name’s Mathew Ellsworth. I’m a UX Designer and Software Engineer currently living and working out of the Greater St. Louis area. In college, I started out studying Graphic Communications and Computer Animation. I went on to get my bachelor’s degree in Information Technology with a concentration in Software Engineering. The last ten years of my career were spent at AT&T. I started there as an Associate Software Engineer in 2015, eventually became a Lead UX Designer, until I was caught up in a layoff at the end of 2024. I’ve spent the last few months taking classes and working on my portfolio, which leads us up to now. I’m writing a blog.
Why am I writing a blog?
I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW ME AND MY WORK
If I’m being entirely honest, I’m writing this blog for somewhat selfish reasons. I think everyone at some point in their life has wanted to be seen or recognized for their work. I sincerely hope this blog gives people an opportunity to get to know me and my process as a designer, artist, and engineer. I hope more people get to see my work, both in-progress and completed, and that sharing my work might lead to a meaningful discourse on what it means to do good work.
I WANT TO CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE
I view this blog as an opportunity to meet like-minded people and possible collaborators. If someone out there is thinking they might want to work with me, I hope this blog can help solidify their decision to reach out and connect. I think this is a chance to meet and have discussions with other designers, artists, and engineers who are also doing their best to create amazing digital experiences. And who knows, maybe sharing my experience could somehow help others in their journey.
I WANT TO SHARE MY KNOWLEDGE
I’ve been building and designing for the web for over 20 years now. I was in high school when I created my first anime fan-art website on GeoCities. I feel like I’ve learned a lot since then and I hope that I can somehow share my knowledge here for the benefit of others. In fact, I’m still learning and growing as a person every day. I’d like to bring people along on that journey.
What can you expect to find here?
WHAT I’M WORKING ON, OR LEARNING AT THE MOMENT
I’ve heard a lot of talk online about creating work out in the open for everyone to see, and the idea sounds appealing to me. Over the past year, I’ve taken classes on web accessibility, 3D modeling and sculpting, traditional animation, storyboarding, and motion graphics. I recently started re-reading my old Programming Logic and Design book from college. I’ve been re-learning how to code in C and C++. I’m thinking my next project might be a small indie game. Even this portfolio and blog has been a process in learning block-theme development for WordPress. I want to share all of that and more.
IN CONCLUSION
If any of this sounds interesting, I hope you consider bookmarking this page and coming back on occasion for updates. I hope to be posting here fairly frequently. This is all very new, so please bear with me while I figure things out. In the meantime, please feel free to look around more on this site if you haven’t already, or connect with me on my socials: LinkedIn, Instagram, or Threads.
Thanks for your time,
Mathew