About Dvorak Designs
Preston Dvorak
I am the designer behind Dvorak Designs. I’m a 22 year old tech-geek. I live in Bloomington, Minnesota where I run my web development business. I currently hold an Associate’s Degree in Graphic Design from the Minneapolis Business College, where I graduated in 2008 on the Dean’s List with a 4.0 GPA.
I have a wide range of hobbies and activities I enjoy, and it goes without saying that web development is one of the top ones. I’ve been doing it since I was 12 and first had access to a computer. I can’t exactly say how I got into it at first, but since I started I’ve always enjoyed coding websites. I like taking things apart to organize and optimize them, so having lines and lines of code to go through and organize is fun for me. I’m always trying to make websites load faster without sacrificing usability or design.
When I’m not developing websites, I’m probably playing video games. Which I’ve been doing since I could hold a controller. I started out with a Game Boy and an NES, and moved all the way up to where I am today with computer gaming. As a direct result of my love for video games, I also build and over-clock computers. After owning my first computer, it wasn’t long before I was taking it apart and trying to figure out how it worked. Then, of course, I found out I could make my computer go faster (optimize it) without actually buying any new parts. This became another challenge and hobby for me. Just like websites, I have an obsession with making computers run faster without sacrificing stability or the well-being of the machine.
When I’m not working with computer and web technology, I’m dabbling in metal work, cars, carpentry, and almost anything else that requires learning how things work and go together. I have a natural curiosity that leads me to explore new things both in and out of web development. In a feeble attempt to satisfy my insatiable need to figure everything out.
I also make regular visits to see my girlfriend in Kansas. Which is always an enjoyable and relaxing experience, and is a great place to go if you need to get away from everything without being completely out of touch.
My Skill Sets
Below are my self-assessed abilities when it comes to the various aspects of web design and development.
- Expert In: Modx, HTML, Photoshop, Dreamweaver
- Proficient In: WordPress, Simple Machine Forum (SMF), Search Engine Optimization, CSS
- Good With: Text Pattern, InDesign, Illustrator, jQuery, Setting up/Backing Up MySQL Databases
- Other Stuff I’ve Worked With: PHP, Javascript, Flash (This is stuff I work with, but that I couldn’t code/create from the ground up without some more learning)
Dvorak Designs
I started Dvorak Designs in March of 2009, shortly after graduating from college. Before attending college, and even during college, I had quite a list of things that I could see myself doing. I settled on web development as my “main” career because I love doing it and there was very little overhead needed to get into the industry. That’s not to say it was easy. I was a typical over-cocky college graduate that thought I would take the design industry by storm with my trendy designs. That was not the case. Instead, I’ve spent the last two years after college playing catch up, designing and redesigning, refining and learning. In fact, I’m still doing all of those things now, which is evident by my most recent website redesign.
Despite how unforgiving the web development industry is to get known in, I have been making gradual steps. I’ve settled down with a more logical approach to my business, and instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, I’ve been focusing on just making the wheel better. Making it my own. Since then, I’ve picked up a handful of long-term clients from around the world. They continue to foster my growth and help me work to satisfy my curiosity and need to learn. I have also grown to love giving clients exactly what they’re looking for, and then some. I have a very high attention to detail that I put into every project I do. Even after a website is released, I continue to work on improving it using fresh techniques and ideas.
Over the Years
I’ve been doing website design and development since I was 12. I decided to compile an overview of things I have done since then, to show both myself and everyone else reading this how I’ve grown. Most of this stuff is completely from memory, I didn’t really know I would be here today, so I never kept track of a lot of it. It is a little wordy, too. You have been warned!
2001
I built my very first, publicly available website. It was built on MaxPages, a now dead free website generator, and was (of course) about video games. By any self-respecting web developers standards today, it would have been considered awful. As with most free website generators, it was filled with ads and pop-ups. Regardless, I was fascinated by it, and worked quite a lot every day after school and over the summer to try and better it.
2002
In an attempt to get away from all the ads and gain more customization ability, I built another website on FreeWebs. This is another free website generator that still exists today. As such, you can still see the website in all its glory here: http://www.freewebs.com/planetcnc/index.htm. This one didn’t last very long, as I quickly started to discover how to host websites myself and get my own domain name.
This lead me to start learning how to build websites from the ground up, instead of using free generators where all I did was fill in my content. Back then, it was common practice to build websites on tables, so that’s what I started out with. I also got pretty heavily into making the designs in Photoshop, cutting them up, and putting them into Dreamweaver. I really didn’t have any concept of load times or really optimizing my websites like I do today, but I still tried.
2003 – 2006
When I started high school, I focused pretty heavily on tech related classes, including graphic and web design. By now I had Dreamweaver and Photoshop down fairly well for not having any formal guidance. I continued to expand my knowledge, and early in 2004 I picked up my first “client,” the Kennedy Chopper Class. Which, at the time, was an after school motorcycle building club. I built a website from the ground up using what I knew, and hosted it for them. Building a website for someone else for the first time was a unique experience, and really pushed me to want to continue to make it better. Since then, the website has gone over several redesigns and I continued to learn more and more.
While I didn’t make any money on the project, it did lead me to entertain the idea of having my own web development business. So I also started taking business related classes towards the end of my high school career.
2007
I graduated from high school fairly unsure of what I wanted to do, and ultimately decided on a Graphic Design major at the Minneapolis Business College. At the time, I chose the program because it was relatively fast. So, if I decided on another career path I wouldn’t have spent too much time somewhere else. It was also business oriented, which I thought would benefit me starting my own business.
During college, I picked up a lot of useful skills with programs I had never used before (InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, etc.), but my favorite thing to do was still build websites. About halfway through my time there, a picked up another project, this time a paid one. Which pretty much cemented my idea of a web development business.
2008
Graduated from Minneapolis Business College with an Associate’s Degree in Graphic Design, a 4.0 GPA, and having been on the Dean’s List my entire time there.
For the next several months after graduating, I worked through just how I was going to start my business. Including making sure I did all of the legal things correctly and had a solid plan.
2009
I officially launched Dvorak Designs. I also consider this to be the official start of my professional design career.
The start of my business was rough, I got no work. Due in part to the fact I didn’t have a strong web design portfolio and insisted on trying to offer every design service under the sun. I quickly started to refine what I offered, but it still wasn’t enough. I went most of this year without any real long term work.
The plus out of this year was I started to learn more about CSS and Content Management Systems, which was key to my long-term success as a web developer.
2010
A full redesign of my website was launched this year, which offered a more refined set of services catered towards web development exclusively. This helped me focus my time spent learning on web development, instead of feeling like I needed to learn everything in the design world (logo design, printing, brochure design, etc.). I had also built the new website on a Content Management System, while using a lot of “advanced” CSS techniques I had learned over the course of the last year. In addition to that, I also had a blog attached to the website, which gave me the opportunity to learn the popular WordPress blogging platform. I also took my first serious endeavorer into Social Media for my business. I had marginal success, but continued to build off of it with the help of my blog.
I also started working on oDesk, where I got my first long-term client. It was a huge boost of confidence and provided me an opportunity to expand my knowledge of working with someone else and meeting their deadlines. I won’t lie, it was nice to be making steady money, too. Not a lot of money, but something.
