Blacksmith Agency  2020

When I joined Blacksmith, my first assignment was to build their own agency website. They already had a design ready so I just had to code it using Next.js with a headless WordPress backend.

One of my favorite challenges was the infinite scrolling navigation menu. Instead of using typical CSS transforms, I dove deep into native scroll events to create an incredibly smooth experience. It's these kinds of details that taught me how small interactions can elevate an entire website.

Blacksmith was where I really got comfortable with responsive design. The constant flow of projects from different industries meant I was always solving new layout challenges.

Working with the design team was great. They'd hand off these complex designs, and I'd have to figure out how to make them work across all screen sizes. But the real challenge wasn't just making things look good at different breakpoints - it was building layouts that could handle real-world content changes.

Clients would often update copy or swap images after launch, so we had to build super resilient layouts. I learned to anticipate problems like long copy that would break layouts, or how new images with different aspect ratios could mess up carefully planned designs. Even color changes needed to be handled dynamically to maintain proper contrast and visual hierarchy.

The projects ranged from university websites like Cottey College to food industry sites like Ricos Cheese. Each one had its own quirks and requirements, which kept things interesting and helped me build up a solid foundation in frontend development.

There were tough lessons too. Sometimes we had to deal with badly written code from previous developers, which meant working extra hours to fix and rebuild within tight budgets. These situations taught me a lot about code quality and the real costs of technical debt.