Lateley march 2023

What I’m doing

Peek-a-booing —

Somewhere trying to make Lucy laugh.

What’s inspiring me

Analog ephemera —

Could you tell by this website? Maps, posters, postcards, books, matchbooks...

The 60s & 70s —

If you've seen me on Zoom, you already know. Gimme all the oranges, greens, browns, patterns, woodgrain, and shaggy textures.

♫ —

I’m pretty much always listening to the Beatles, but lately some old Americana/folk stuff: Connie Converse, Woodie Guthrie, Elizabeth Cotten, John Prine, and...well a lot of Phoebe Bridgers, can you blame me?

c. 2020 — present

What I’m doing

Working at my cozy desk at home

Dog and cats napping in my Zoom background, relishing every lunch break I get to have with my family.

Occasional office trips to SF

Enjoying a quieter city, and reconnecting with the old stomping grounds and the people in it.

What’s inspiring me

My momma

My mom's been a Pharmacy Technician for over 25 years. It’s one of the reasons I joined Alto.

Alto’s care team

Our frontlines staff are the true embodiment of our brand and always go above and beyond for patients.

♫

Takeshi Terauchi, Billy Cobb, Cursive, C.W. Stoneking, Pokey LaFarge, Beach Boys, Khruangbin, Fleetwood Mac, Camera Obscura, boygenius

c. 2017 — present

What I’m doing

Exploring Albany

Making this tiny town feel even smaller by getting to know the community.

Graphic designin’

Moving pixels, pickin’ out fonts, hanging out with some my old pals like pen and brush tool.

What’s inspiring me

Imperfection

The one-of-a-kind-if-you-mess-up-too-bad nature of screen printing. There's no endless cloud of outtakes to fall back on here.

Local pride

I love how much people love it here. Makes it easy to feel at home when you're grocery shopping, walking the dog, or waiting in line at the post office.

c. 2019-2020

What I was doing

Cultivating creativity

Making design inclusive by running weekly creative time, facilitating lateral thinking workshops, and teaching the whole team, not just design, how to look inward to express outward.

Learning the leadership ropes

I got to "have a seat" for the first time and participated in company strategy and brought a people-centric view to the table.

What inspired me

San Francisco

I especially enjoyed writing an endless love letter to SF through building housing and community in the city, helping newcomers and locals alike connect with each other and their neighborhoods.

Chinatown

The office was at Kearny and Columbus and I walked through Chinatown almost every day, a bustling community that has held onto to its history in a storied way that most of the rest of the city hasn't.

♫ —

Shintaro Sakamoto, The Doors, Hinds, The Zombies, SALES, FIDLAR, The Good Life, Flamingosis, Elton John, Flaming Lips

c. 2016 — 2020

What I was doing

Living in a trailer

Enjoying self-employment while traveling through the States and Canada in a mostly fixed-up 1978 Scamp.

Looking out the window at Twin Peaks

After living in a 60 square foot trailer, downsized to a sub-500 square foot studio in Diamond Heights.

What inspired me

Freedom

Running an independent practice as well as all the road traveling made me realize how fulfilling simply being able to choose how you spend your time is.

Idleness

A few years of practiced reduction in possessions and “busyness” shaped how I think about how few things actually matter, but the ones that do matter a lot.

♫

Bram Stoker's Dracula, spooky podcasts, The Get Up Kids, Alkaline Trio, Manchester Orchestra, Iron & Wine, Arcade Fire, CCR, Ben Kweller, Weezer, Pavement

On Personal Websites

I came of age on the Internet. Back then, it was the place you’d go to discover yourself —

hyperlink by hyperlink,
chatroom by chatroom,
spacer.gif by ;

Before today’s Internet™ (which tells you who you are by tracking your every move), there once was a collective, generational obsession with creating one’s own Internet Identity, by way of Livejournals, Myspaces, Geocities, etc. There was magic in the equally infinite yet temporal nature of the medium. Creating, destructing, then reconstructing your own little corner-of-the-Net; an eternal evolution of your journey, all on display for the world to follow, before following was even a thing. The Internet is where I grew up. It’s where I bought my first guitar and rented my first apartment. It’s where I Asked Jeeves if Devon Sawa had a girlfriend; learned about punk and emo and hyphy; pirated movies to talk about on first dates;
AND!!!
...learned how to make websites! I’ve been experimenting with music and haircuts and style for decades, and rediscovery is still one of my all-time favorite hobbies. Somewhere along the way, abetted by IG-algobots, TikTok challenges, and endless profiles and subscriptions, we lost our creative fixation with the Personal Website.

So here goes an nth version of jackiengo.com jackiengorenner.com — a tribute to reflecting, resetting, and reimagining; a conflation of work and play, personal and professional, resume and journal. After all, we only get this one timeline — might as well have a bit of fun on it.

p.s. for the curious, here is the previous version of this site (c. 2020), the one before that (c.2014), and one of the very first versions (c. 2010)

c. 2020 — present

Connecting dots

I joined Alto to take Design Systems from 0 to 1. When I started, Alto had three disparate component libraries structured by platform (desktop web, native, and responsive web) and a Sketch-migrated-to-Figma sticker sheet that representated maybe 25% of what was in code. The platform loosely supported three products (patient-facing, provider-facing, and internal) across multiple platforms (iOS, Android, mobile web, and web). The “system” was brittle at best, no processes were in place, and a long-term strategy was non-existent.

Near-term impact > long-term strategy

I spent a good chunk of time developing a long-term strategy, guiding foundational work like principles and vision, and came out with a two-year plan: we would restructure our systems by user needs and consolidate the libraries into one system of systems that honored our brand. It wasn't well-received. It was too future-looking without a clear understanding of what we needed tactically, in say, the next six months, to get us closer. So I pivoted and just got to work. Put my head down and chipped away across all three libraries — building components, cleaning up old ones, creating all the tooling for designers from the ground-up, and consulting across product teams on what we were doing and how they could help.

Fast forward to today — it's happening!

I'm really proud to say that what I set out to do in those first few months is the direction we are headed. Here are some of the milestones accomplished:

Built a robust internal component library

We built out a library of common components used in our internal tools so teams could build more rapidly.

Launched a native external design system

We completely rethought our external design language and launched tokens, and a complete native design system, from atoms to full-page layouts.

Front-end transformation in the patient app

We pulled off what looks like a complete app redesign, but chipped away pragmatically at it over the course of 1 year. Today, the app is a completely different visual language than before.

c. 2017 — present

All in
the
family

Having spent most of my career on the Internet, I was so pleased when I met my partner to find that he spent his offline. He, like me, turned a hobby into a career, so it was instinctive to come together.

As business people, we provide on-site live screen printing for parties and events. We've printed everything from small, private parties to Dreamforce.

As hobbyists, we make stuff for fun and friendship. We make local gear for the Albany community and sell them at markets around town. We make a Christmas sweatshirt every year. We make shirts and totes to give away at parties we throw. We create one-off pieces that are special to us.

A few parties we’ve attended

Visit the website

c. 2019-2020

Starcity’s mission was to make cities more accessible to everyone through developing and operating coliving homes.

I took the leap and joined the then-18-person team as the first designer after freelancing on a handful of projects. When a company’s purpose aligns with my personal values, and the impact on the people it serves is as valued as the bottom line, it’s an easy decision to make.

In one year, the team grew to over 40 folks, expanded to 3 cities, and I checked off a record number of firsts.

Established and led both product design and brand functions

We did it all - internal ops tooling, member-facing mobile app, marketing website, branding and marketing collateral, out-of-home advertising, photo shoots, blog content, social media, swag, events, internal brand materials — you name it, we designed it. I wrapped my first van, and designed my first billboard!

Other notable firsts:

Hired my first team

They are still two of the best designers I’ve ever worked with. Krishi and Jia - go peep them. I would hire them infinitely!

Led an end-to-end rebrand

Not my first brand rodeo but by far most extensive. We approached brand-as-product, and iterated on our identity as our company matured to different evolutions.

Sat at the leadership table

Set product and brand strategy and brought a people-centric point of view to the business conversations.

Spun up a UXR function

We did immersive studies to deeply understand members' journeys to build better experiences for them.

freelance
c. 2016 — 2020

By 2016 I grew jaded with tech and quit my job — a privilege I’ll always be grateful for. I cut my teeth at running a business, managing my own time, and being intentional with what I worked on and how I spent my time.

Did I stall my ascent up the corporate ladder? I’ll never know. What I do know is that I learned to trust myself, gained courage, and lived priceless miles in corners all over the country; more than any unlimited-PTO policy could ever provide.

It was a life highlight.

Canyon Cinema, a local SF non-profit, is one of the only major sources for prints of avant-garde and experimental film in America. I designed their online catalog of experimental, avant-garde and artist-made moving images and educational material.

Visit the website
Logo explorations for Jaded Digital, an independent media and entertainment company dedicated to Asian youth culture. I was an early brand advisor, partnering with the CEO to set foundational brand strategy prior to launch.
Branding and design for local businesses and restaurants in the Bay Area.
Brand and product visual language evolution explorations for Livongo (Teladoc).

Other fun engagements

Worked on an internal A/B testing platform and spun up the internal tools design system. Enjoyed high-rise views of Downtown Oakland.
Researched and interviewed the team and presented a report of findings and actionable next steps for their product design system.
Helped get the first design system off the ground and embedded directly on the team. One of my first forays into health tech.
Launched the website for a new D2C telehealth skincare brand.
Created a closing dashboard for homebuyers and worked on a number of buyer growth and engagement initiatives.
Created a brand guidelines portal to lay foundations for centralizing design functions, resources, and systems.
Drove strategy through foundational research for a new product looking to help high school students navigate the college application process.
Conducted research and built features for an app that helps non-profits find and win grants. Pet the office cat, Bella.

What else?

At the height of the Gatsby era of tech, I was the first Web Platform Designer at Uber, creating the first internal tools design system. While there, I spearheaded a bunch of culture initiatives, including a morning breakfast hang, an internal design speaker series, and facilitated a bunch of fun get-to-know-you activities as the team scaled to over 80 designers. I worked there during the thick of the Superpumped era and it’s definitely one of the reasons I left. Ask me for stories.

Before that, I helped launch Beats Music —at the time, a monumental achievement in innovating curated streaming experiences—but now feels like only a blip in the timeline. This work still lives on at Apple, where I shipped Apple Music on Android (the irony is not lost on me). I got to shake Jimmy Iovine’s hand and presented a design review to Trent Reznor. A highly inspired career highlight. Tons of stories here too.

📢

Between giving talks internally, sometimes I get the courage to talk to a room full of strangers. I got to speak at the Experience Design Summit, gave a talk on designing for healthcare, and once visited Chile to talk about design systems.

🦖

Oh god, there’s more? Post-college I did a tour working at agencies. I created point-of-purchase displays for Walmart, packaging for headphones and laundry detergent, websites for financial institutions and e-commerce brands, brochures for biotech companies, and a number of design systems for startups of various sizes, but back then we called them “style guides.”

Only once did I wear a black turtleneck to a client presentation.

Real Talk

Beneath all the layers of resume is the real, actual stuff that matters. I really truly love how I get to spend my time, can you tell? I’m lucky to enjoy a love of craft and make a living doing it. I love being on this journey with others, and relishing every tiny and every huge moment.

It’s all just so goddamn spectacular.

× ο × ο

If I know you, I can’t wait to see you again.
If I don’t, I hope our timelines cross soon.

Find me elsewhere—
Instagram, LinkedIn, Dribbble, Twitter

If you’re really after my heart, write me a letter—
jackiengorenner at gmail dot com