* I offer every client the benefit of my education, training and expertise, but when it comes down to it, the customer is always the one who pays the bills right. I can build something the way it should be done, or I can build it the way the client wants it done. If a client asks for something that will impair the end product in some way, I explain what the issue is and offer alternatives. But in the end, I am building the client's products, not mine, and they make the final decision. While not every client walks away with the best product ever built, they all walk away with what works best for them, and I have never had an unhappy customer.

Call Me Master

My name is Tonya Abna Slatt and I am a Senior Designer and Developer. I have a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a master's degree in Computer Graphics. The master's is actually in 'Visualization Sciences', which is a fancy way of saying computer graphics, but I'm not fancy, so I just call it what it is. I thought about getting a phD, so people would have to call me Doctor, but decided against it. After writing a 140 page master's thesis, enough was enough. You can call me Master, though, if you want.

Working for Nickels

My illustrious career began early. Growing up poor, you either get a solid work ethic young or you learn to do without. I have been working in the web field for 13 years and the design field for 30 years (if you count that I began selling my artwork at age 6 for a nickel a piece to classmates who wanted to take a drawing home to their parents and claim it as their own… if not, I've been doing professional design work for 16 years). I get paid a little more now than when I started.

Sometimes Crappy = Happy

As a professional, experienced designer and developer I am not too shy to tell you that I can do wonders. I can create a cross-browser website that is beautiful, fast, interactive, usable, accessible, reliable, profitable, and extensible that adheres to web standards and has crisp, clean, readable, efficient code. I can also create a really crappy website, but only if that's what you really, really want. Some clients don't want a good site. They want their vision brought to light and will not be happy with anything less… or anything more. So, I may have worked on the occasional sub-par project, but I have never had an unhappy customer.

I Also Occasionally Sleep

Ok, ok, I sleep quite a bit. But when I'm not sleeping, I'm multitasking. To date, I have worked on at least 223 individual websites. If you count that I usually do 3-7 distinct designs for a site before one is chosen, and that many of the individual websites that I've worked on were redesigned one or more times over the years, the number of sites I've worked on is vastly greater. As of now, I have also worked on at least 225 non-web, design projects, including print, digital art, traditional art, photography, presentations, video, and animation projects. The actual number is much greater, but I didn't keep track in the beginning and stopped keeping track long ago.

Food is More Fun than Filing

I've worked on more things than design and development, though. When I was a kid, in addition to selling my artwork, I did odd jobs around the neighborhood, yard work and house cleaning, until I was old enough to join the babysitting racket. Then, in high school and college, I had some really boring office jobs organizing files, doing data entry, editing manuals and outputting charts. I also had a few restaurant jobs that were actually a lot more fun than the office jobs. I was a pretty darn good waitress and worked my way up to assistant manager in this cute little diner near campus.

I Love Office Supplies

While working as a designer/developer, I've also done quite a bit of project and team management and training. The training covered everything from just cross-training coworkers, to developing course work and teaching web development to full classrooms. It would probably have been more fun if my students had actually wanted to be there. Project management is something I usually wind up doing even when I'm not the assigned project manager. I'm just generally hyper-organized. And I color-code like nobody's business.

Either Way, You'll Never Hear from Me Again

One of these days I plan to get my portfolio together and post it on my website, but, like most designer/developers, I never have time to keep my own site up-to-date. Chances are that the above stats are no longer valid because I've either done 500 new things since I wrote this, or because I ran off to join the circus. It could go either way. Except that the circus kind of creeps me out. But I would like to run off to a tropical island. One with white beaches and blue water. Or to Galveston. It has brown beaches and brown water, but it's still one of my favorite places.

Buy Me an Island

If you would like to fund my dream of spending lazy days on a beach somewhere by giving me outrageous amounts of money for my design and development talents, please contact me. If, however, you'd like to interest me in opening a franchise somewhere, helping you obtain your inheritance, putting a link to your site on my site, increasing my stamina, or joining your harem, don't bother.