Howdy.
I’m Blake, an engineer in Austin, Texas. I have a BFA in communication design and sixteen years of shipping software, which is a combination that sounds like a detour and turned out to be the whole point: I spent four years learning why a layout works before I ever learned how to make one run.
It pays off in two directions. On a project with no designer and no direction, I can make the call myself and know it holds up. On one with a designer, I can argue in their language, go to bat for the details worth fighting for, and still know where my lane ends. The rest of the time I’m building the layers underneath, which these days means schemas, caching, and the occasional bot.
Every duration below is computed from its dates rather than written down. The first two stops are the design ones; everything after November 2010 is engineering. The strip is the whole run to scale.
- Jan 2025 – Present1 yr 7 mos
Revmatics
Lead Front End EngineerLeading the front end.
- Jan 2024 – Jan 20251 yr
findhelp
Senior Staff EngineerSocial care software, at the staff level.
- Oct 2021 – Nov 20232 yrs 1 mo
Cart.com
Lead Front End Engineer · Feb 2023 – Nov 2023Senior Front End Engineer · Oct 2021 – Feb 2023Unified Analytics: AI-driven visualizations for brands, and the shared component library several teams built on.
- Apr 2020 – Oct 20211 yr 6 mos
Moblize
Software EngineerReal-time drilling dashboards, and an AngularJS migration that had to keep running throughout.
- Jul 2019 – Apr 20209 mos
The Karis Group
Senior Software EngineerA member portal that turned form input into pre-populated medical assistance PDFs.
- Dec 2013 – Jul 20195 yrs 7 mos
IBM
Staff Software EngineerThe long one. Cloud dashboards, native Android, the Watson SDKs, and a CMS built from scratch.
- Sep 2012 – Nov 20131 yr 2 mos
TAVHealth
DeveloperGroovy on Grails, helping hospital staff track outpatients.
- Nov 2010 – Aug 20121 yr 9 mos
AllClear ID
Web DeveloperRebuilt the site through a corporate rebrand, and started the internal style guide. The first component library, before anyone called it that.
- Jun 2010 – Sep 20103 mos
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Graphic DesignerLogos and collateral, plus a twenty-page brochure start to finish.
- Feb 2009 – May 20093 mos
Murillo Design
Graphic Design InternLogos, branding, email, stationery. Where the whole thing starts.
- Dec 2008Cum laude
Texas State University
BFA, Communication DesignFour years of typography, grids, and critique. It is the reason this site is measured in picas and the reason I know what a colophon is.
- Outside
- Hiking, and a camera that comes along
- Hands
- Carpentry, drawing
- Ears
- Making music, and a great deal of consuming it
- Household
- Passionate about dogs, on the record
I am fascinated by fungus, and by the mycelial networks running under most of the world without anyone noticing.
It is not lost on me that I now spend my working hours building a shared substrate that other things quietly grow out of, and that nobody notices it either until it stops working. I was into the metaphor well before I had a component library to justify it.
A colophon is the note at the back of a printed book naming the typefaces, the paper, and the press. This site is a print job that runs in a browser, so it gets one.
- Framework
- Next.js 16, App Router
- Components
- @blakesteve/roster 4.2.0
- Catalog
- 40 components, read live
- Styling
- Tailwind CSS v4, cascade layers
- Host
- Vercel
- Press sheet
- Cool stock, ink black, process magenta
- Blueline
- The proof stage, printed in blue
- Palette
- Nine families, derived from one anchor each
- Proof it
- Press ⌥X to outline every component
Open to talking about front end leadership, design systems, and anything where the interface and the thing underneath it are the same job.