Hey, I'm Hawk (he/him).

I consider myself to be a lot of things with an elevator pitch that is forever evolving. Lately, I describe myself as a design developer with a past life in filmmaking.

As a filmmaker, I created films and video content that have been viewed 50+ million times, been featured on Last Week Tonight by John Oliver, and won regional Emmy awards. Throughout that time, I became increasingly curious about the technology I used and how it worked.

Today, that curiosity has led me to Microsoft's Developer Division Design Studios (D3 Studios for short) where I support products such as VS Code, Visual Studio, and .NET. I use design and code to help build and evangelize some of the most beloved developer tools on earth and represents a balance of the creative and technical that I deeply enjoy.

But like... who are you really?

Yes, yes. Obligatory description of how I productively fit into capitalist society complete. Who am I outside of that?

Well, partially the same.

Hey, I'm Hawk (he/him and short for Hawthorne). I consider myself to be a lot of things with no succint way of describing who that person is.

I currently live in Seattle and try my best to live a balanced, community-filled, and cozy life with my girlfriend and our dog Poppy.

We, as of late, spend our time doing (probably too many) hobbies, catching up on two lost years with friends and family, and getting as much rest as we can in between.

I've been bouldering basically every week since May 2021. It's become a sort of practice for me, in the same way that yoga or meditation can be sometimes described as a "practice" –– working my body and stretching what I think is possible. It's the best I've felt in years. (For the curious, I climb around a V5-V7 level right now).

I've also recently discovered a new part of life, which is death; navigating the grief of losing a parent.

During the last few years my pendulum of interests have swung towards the technical, but I've finally started feeling a pull back towards the creative (exciting!).

I'm watching more TV and movies, reading more, and am channeling my time/energy into creative projects of my own. See my art page for a touch of what I'm up to.

Colophon

This website is built with Astro. I was building my own web framework for awhile, but then discovered Astro does everything I could ever want, and far better. Community built software is truly a great wonder of the modern world.

To reduce page load times, this site avoids webfonts and uses system fonts. If you're using macOS or iOS you're probably seeing "SF Pro", on Windows you likely see "Segoe", and honestly not too sure about Linux. Maybe Helvetica?

I occasionally use Figma to design parts of this website and create imagery for it. But far more often I just design with code.

My writing and the design of this website is copyrighted. Feel free to ask if you want to reuse any content beyond the bounds of fair use.

This site is ad-free and doesn’t use trackers.

Contact

Email: [email protected]