I make things for screens.

It doesn't matter whether I'm designing for a stage, a piece of paper, or a screen — it's all about consciously creating an experience for another person, and then presenting it to them. I've been doing just that for over 20 years.

It was in 1996 that I first began creating websites. My best-known work was designing and creating the new default theme for Drupal 7, named Bartik. I'm currently obsessed with HTML5 and have been spending a lot of time digging into the possibilities of the newest web technology, contemplating it's implications for design. You might know me from my recent presentations to the Drupal community leading the effort to get the beloved software to generate HTML5.

I currently work a senior developer at Palantir.net, where I spend most of my day doing front-end development and architecting Drupal sites.

Besides designing for the web, I spent almost twenty years designing for live performance and for print. I started making things printed on paper in 1989, and over the next decade I created thousands of postcards, posters, small books, bumper stickers, t-shirts, brochures and the like.

Through the 1990s and 2000s, I designed lighting, sets, and sound for numerous performing artists, including Peggy Shaw, Lourdes Pérez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Beto Araiza, Sandra Cisneros, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, and Cherrie Moraga. My work was commissioned by theaters including PS122 (NYC), Gloucester Stage Company (Boston), Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (San Antonio), Jump-Start Performance Co. (San Antonio), and the Vortex Theater (Austin). Most notably, I designed and created seven-channel projections for Violet Fire, Jon Gibson and Miriam Seidel's opera about Nikola Tesla. Performed by a Serbian cast and orchestra, Violet Fire opened in Belgrade, Serbia for the Royal celebration of Tesla's 150th birthday, and traveled to New York for the 2006 BAM Next Wave Festival.

I also directed several short films which screened at over a hundred film festivals around the globe, including Resfest, Media That Matters, Frameline, International Film Festival Rotterdam, OutFest and NewFest. Called by WFAA TV in Dallas “a brilliantly spliced national address that turns the commander in chief into a dove,” Bush for Peace (2003) played online to more than 150,000 viewers in the era before YouTube popularized online video. Inclinations (2005), a romantic coming-out comedy, was acquired by MTV.

I taught as an Adjunct Professor for three years at Temple University’s Department of Film and Media Arts, where I also earned an MFA degree. Before that, I was an Media Arts Instructor at the award-winning Say Sí: San Antonio Youth Yes, teaching video-game design, digital collage, and filmmaking to high-school students. These days I love to present at conferences, and teach wherever I can.

I live in New York City. You can follow me on twitter: jensimmons.