Hello, I am Isaac Volpe, current graduate student at the University of Arkansas in the Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies program. I have been a graphic design and web development freelancer for over ten years with a focus on the Frontend, with particular proficiency in CSS.
I began web freelancing as a teenager in 2007 after having a template design being chosen for purchase by then WYSIWYG web builder Moonfruit, and at the same time locally being approached to make websites (happens to anyone perceived as a general tech specialist). I had previously made websites for online communities in Flash with Actionscript, but shortly I started to develop a steady stream of clients with non-profits and minority businesses, ranging from logo design to computer repair (again for being the approachable ‘expert’).
I transitioned into making websites from scratch and falling in love with CSS (yes it happens). I quickly went from using frameworks to building some of my own and mastering preprocessors. I jumped into Wordpress, and learned how to use Twig templating with Timber to escape the dreaded Wordpress ’loop’ and build custom themes. After having a small portfolio of recurring clients, the managed hosting fees (extent of my knowledge at the time) lead me to start running servers of my own through DigitalOcean. Overtime I reduced much of my overhead and learned a lot from many mistakes along the way.
Capable of being a one-man studio, I was always looking to see how I can make things more accessible, faster, and cost-effective. I made the transition from jQuery to using Vanilla Javascript as I became an adopter of JAMstack architecture. I was familiar with doing Backend work, DevOps to run my own servers, and now the transition to using web based API relational databases for my clients really sped up and improved my setup through Netlify and KeyCDN.
I became fond of Vue because I could still write SCSS and markup as I always had but now in single file components that still obeyed a cascade to keep things ordered without bloating up my projects. Though as much as I love Vue, and use it for UI with little additional node dependencies, I also began to learn how to use Hugo to have the best possible performance and no reliance on Javascript. In this way, I found the right balance for me, Hugo for static websites, Vue for web apps, and Nuxt + Laravel for server-side projects.
Despite being able to communicate across disciplines and have working knowledge across the production pipeline, I do not wish to give the impression I am a Fullstack developer—I very much label myself as a Frontend developer and visual designer. I’m at home working with vectors and UI. I have an academic side, but to be honest I can hardly escape doing web dev so I’m always looking new projects and to have my next design be my best yet.
Thanks for reading this far! Hope you learned a little about me. Always available to chat if you want to know more details, or see how my experience will work for you.