Andrew Fernandez

pop culture junkie come aspiring web professional

dwh is short for dezwozhere, the online presence and design identity of andrew fernandez, otherwise known as dez to his friends and co-workers. My portfolio site due for launch soon is located at dezwozhere.com. The companion design weblog for that site can be found at dezwozhere.com/blog.

dwh.typepad.com is planned as my play site. I plan to move my pop culture blog here. I also have a few other projects in mind for this site in the future. The main purpose is to have fun while try various techniques out and learning.

After years of working in print and desk top publishing, I have been making the transition into freelance web design over the last year or so.

My first website was mahliasimpson.com , which I completed in four days in order to meet a deadline. It employs conventional design methods (image slicing etc.) but I plan to return to redesign this site in line with more contemporary, efficient methods (for standards and accessibility).

Currently I am working on a redesign of the Jaanz School of Singing website, identity/site design for the Australian International Institute for Contemporary Singing and have just finished a site design for brandonb.com .

The web is an ever changing and unpredictable. One never stops learning. In fact since I began learning web design, methods I learnt - what Jeffrey Zeldman would call "old school slice and dice" - have fast become obsolete. Over the last few months, I have become easily and quickly convinced that Web standards, accessibility and semantic markup are the only way to future proof websites. As such my learning continues and my methods are changing, slowly but surely.

What has not changed is my core method and approach to my work.

I am not an artist or an illustrator. And I am not in the business of producing art or being creative for creativity's sake. There are very talented people out there who do brilliant and original work using the above premise as their starting point. This is not me...

Such brilliance and originality can be found for instance in the CSS Zen Garden. Work like this is a continual source of inspiration to me, giving something to continually aspire to.

However, I see my self as a communicator first and foremost - I help deliver a message to a specified audience on behalf of someone else, a client. My strength is being focussed on helping them to realise their vision for a project.

I have a day job at a University doing promotional/design work and administration for an Activities department. But when I am not working I am either teaching my self new stuff, trying things out or doing freelance work. I have been slowly building a small client base and have one ongoing client. My plan to try to build this up into a business that can pay the bills.

When I'm not working I'm really into movies, tv, music and all things pop culture. I also like playing on the web and with my weblogs and this site will hopefully be the meeting point for all these interests.