A call on a Sunday

Design without context

I got a call on a Sunday from my bosses boss. So I knew something big was happening.

It wasn’t the first time I had a call like this, but it was normally less hush hush, and revolved around something like a new product release or a partnership. But this time it was different. I wasn’t allowed to know anything, except that I was needed to launch a new homepage and announcement banner across all of our site.

Design of a banner using placeholder characters

I got looped into an email thread, where they gave me a number of characters to plan for. I knew it was a partnership, but didn’t know what was happening.

Planning design for something without much detail was difficult. It was really like wire-framing without an intention. It was also pretty thrilling, knowing news was going to launch that had a huge impact, and the work I was doing was one of the first ways people will see.

A redhat.com homepage design with placeholder text

I learned an hour before launch that IBM would be acquiring Red Hat. While I considered what this would mean for what I had designed, I had to stop and think about what it meant for me as well. I knew this would change my work life.

In the end, everything went fairly to plan, and the news was off to the outlets to spread. This was the largest tech acquisition in history, so nothing to sneeze at. I was lucky to be involved.

redhat.com's homepage after acquision

< Back to all work

My work UX contributions

Because I didn't do all of this shit myself

Who I am

Who I am

I’m Dan, a Red Hatter I built this portfolio site to make sure I was spending enough time on me. When you’re a design leader, it’s often hard to invest time in yourself. My free time often goes to scheduling that 1:1 that I haven’t had a chance to do yet, or spending 15 minutes […]

Read the full story

Design talks

Cross-team sharing I helped to start a concept of sharing across our large (at the time) 30 person or so design & development team (it’s now grown to close to 60). As our team evolved, it was becoming more and more difficult to stay connected. What we found useful in smaller sessions were leaders of […]

Read the full story
Design system components

Building tools for designers

Design systems and enablement Sometimes being a designer means making sure others have what they need to design. That could be a designer, a developer, a strategist, among others. Every stage of the process needs design, whether its someone considering a possible future strategy or a designer creating a pixel-perfect component for their experience. For […]

Read the full story