About Justin Chick

I’m a web designer and systems thinker who’s been making things on the Internet since 2010.

Along the way I’ve started a few businesses of my own — most recently Worlds End Books, an online comic book store I built and run myself. So when a client says they need something that’ll increase conversions, or worries about how well their site is holding up, I’m nodding along because I’ve been there too.

I care about craft, accessibility, and making sure what I build actually works for the people who need to use it — not just under perfect conditions.

The work and the years

I’ve been making websites professionally since 2010 — back when you turned PSDs into HTML by hand and “responsive design” was a new idea worth arguing about. A lot has changed. The craft of it still gets me.

For a few years I was Lead Interactive Designer at Hanley Wood, a B2B media company behind publications like Architect, Builder, and Remodeling magazines. That’s where I got to build things at a scale most freelancers don’t — leading front-end development for interactive editorial features, helping rebuild the front-end architecture across 16 brand sites, and collaborating with engineers, editors, and UX teams week to week. The work earned some recognition along the way, including a handful of Azbee Awards from the American Society of Business Publication Editors and a Folio Digital Award. I’m proud of that chapter.

Before and after Hanley Wood I’ve been mostly on my own — freelancing, co-founding a couple of small digital agencies, building client sites, and starting Worlds End Books. Running your own things teaches you stuff you can’t learn any other way.

How I think

I tend to approach problems as systems. What are the parts, how do they connect, where does it break down? That lens applies whether I’m untangling a client’s content strategy, figuring out why their conversion rate is soft, or deciding how a WordPress theme should be architected.

A lot of what I know I learned from the open source community — building with WordPress, Bootstrap, Tachyons, Basscss, Roots Sage — reading other people’s code, understanding their decisions, absorbing their thinking. That’s still how I stay sharp.

What I believe about the web

A good website is readable. Not just readable in the obvious sense — clear writing, decent contrast — but readable to the widest reasonable audience. That means semantic HTML. It means thinking about accessibility from the start, not bolting it on at the end. It means dark mode as a first-class consideration, not an afterthought. It means not designing exclusively for perfect conditions, because most people aren’t experiencing your site under perfect conditions.

I think about things like font rendering for people with dyslexia. I think about what happens when someone’s on a slow connection, or using assistive technology, or just having a hard day and needs the thing to work without friction. Most websites get this wrong not out of malice but out of habit — designing for the person who made the thing rather than the person who needs it.

Outside the browser

I’m currently working toward a degree in Applied Plant and Soil Science at UMass Amherst’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture. It’s a long way from CSS, and also not that far — systems are systems. It rounds me out and keeps me curious, which I think makes me a better designer.

I live and work in Northampton, MA.