I specalize in creating & curating digital products for publishers, artists and entertainment brands.
Have a crazy idea?
I’ve recently had the pleasure to work with an amazingly talented team at Envato, building our love letter to the design community in the form of Elements Template Kits plugin, a tool for rapid prototyping of beautiful and unique web designs with UX in mind.
Working remotely in a disciplined environment
My work with Envato has varied between designing support strategies, launching seed projects with a small development team, overseeing project product design pipelines and producing content to the tune of nearly one full webpage concept per day for 600 days. I am currently responsible for curation and review of author contributed design, QA and design improvements on the Elementor Template Kit product range, Author coaching, and development support for the Envato Elements WordPress plugin.
I provide artists, authors, entrepreneurs and small businesses with hand-crafted WordPress websites and webshops that convey their unique brand or vision. I seek to deliver a top-notch user experience based on careful research into my client’s average visitor, and extend it to my clients through coaching, content development and free support.
From theme development to hotfixing, debugging and QA, many coffees downed and moons gazed while keeping our theme catalogue bright and functional. This hands-on approach to problem solving (and creating) greatly enhanced my skill in programming, debugging and beautifying across a variety of platforms, including WordPress.com.
Developed and managed in-house support systems, documentation and developer resources for our products and open-source framework, Layers. I identified user journeys and target audiences and translated them into concepts, visual designs and user flows with the ultimate goal of surpassing user expectations in support quality and response times. I acted as an advocate for our users and developer community throughout the process of proposing, wire-framing, and implementing UX improvements. Layers went on to inspire the #1 page builder Elementor and was acquired by them in 2018.
Created content marketing and editorial work for Contently’s client brands utilising AP Style, trendcentric topics and my expertise in the design industry.
Content Editor for the WiX Facebook and WiX Mobile blogs, and wrote guest posts for 25+ partners on web design, WordPress and Social Media. Worked closely with the Marketing Manager to coordinate timelines and develop project strategies. Utilised SEO and AP Style editorial technique. My articles have appeared in popular websites including JUSTCreative, Webdesignerdepot, and Specky Boy.
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Past this point is another era before web careers were really a thing. While I worked as a technical lead for a financial corporation, I made websites for local bands, ran a 12,000 member fan portal for Japanese rock artists in English and dreamed of creating something like Bandcamp without knowing how to launch a startup.
Here is a screenshot of one of my earliest professional case studies (Relapse Records) from 2009. Cheers!
copyright 2020 vail joy
Hey, Serious inquiries only.
Due to the volume of email I receive and my general introvertedness, please only use this form for collaboration ideas or serious work requests. Support requests for Elementor, template kits or any product I have been involved with should go through official channels. Thanks!
I am a creative polymath currently located in Croatia. I accept commissions for custom websites, ecommerce or print design on a limited freelance basis. I currently work as a content editor & curator for Envato, a certified B corp.
Currently accepting proposals for 2021. Have a crazy idea? Tell me about it.