Hi everyone! Nelson, here, back with our third featured community member, Katie Schwarz. @katieschwarzdesign is a hard-working mom and designer from San Diego who recently joined us this January. She loves challenges that require both sides of the brain.
She believes design is a way to be “artistic with a purpose.”
In college, Katie took basic coding classes — it felt too technical and less creative than she hoped. She continued to seek out her calling, switching her major from English, to Information Science, then to Ministry (her husband is a Navy Chaplain). In the end, Katie graduated with a dual degree in graphic design & ministry.
Katie started her business in 2009 while also doing graphic design for her church. She didn’t have a lot web design experience, but had used Adobe Dreamweaver in school. For dynamic sites on a CMS platform, she turned to Weebly. However, the Weebly platform didn’t really cater towards unique layouts.
Always looking to expand her skills and business, she learned WordPress. Since most sites use WordPress, she thought it was the best CMS if you wanted your business to be taken seriously. Katie eventually grew frustrated with the maintenance and time WordPress required.
Fast forward to later 2017 when Katie searched for ”alternatives to wordpress” and came across Webflow. According to Katie, Webflow is the “ultimate marriage between web design best practices and a tool that is approachable.”
Katie’s “ah-hah” moment was when she followed along with an interaction tutorial on the Webflow University and learned how to build & animate her own custom navigation menu button from scratch. Today, Katie is working on creating a brand personalities survey and corresponding templates with a landing page builder for her clients using the Webflow CMS.
We are happy to have Katie in our community and wish her the best of luck with her family and her business.
