Designer and developer, same person.

How I got here

I came to design from a delivery route and a job site. Ten years of driving, construction and running crews before I ever opened Figma. Then I went back to school for it and graduated from the Web and Graphic Design program at Bryan University with a 4.0, which meant real training in typography, layout and user experience, plus the engineering side to actually build the thing.

That combination is the whole point. Most website projects need a designer, a developer, and somebody to hold the two together. I am all three, which means fewer handoffs, fewer meetings, and a much shorter line between an idea and something running in production.

I still drive a route Monday through Friday. Everything here got built around it, and that is probably the most honest thing I can tell you about how I work. It is also why I am straight about timelines instead of promising you a Tuesday I cannot hit.

Why that matters for your website

Ten years on job sites means I have been the small business owner's customer, their vendor and their crew. I know what it is like to need something fixed now, to get quoted a number with no explanation behind it, and to be talked to like the question was stupid. I do not run my business that way.

It also means I am comfortable with trades, contractors, resorts and shops, which is most of what operates around here. If you would rather talk on the phone than fill in a form, that is fine. If you would rather I just look at your existing site and tell you what is wrong with it, that is fine too.

What I actually do

Websites are the main thing, and they are what this site is about. Underneath SwansonX LLC I also build brand identity, custom software, desktop applications and game server tooling, which is where the engineering habits come from. Day to day that is Next.js and TypeScript on the web, Java on game servers, and a lot of time spent making AI tooling handle the grunt work so the judgment calls stay human.

For a small business site in Brainerd, none of that matters except in one way: the person building your site does this seriously, not as a side hustle with a template.

How I price

$40 an hour, itemized, every job. I do not run a discovery call you have to sit through before you are allowed to know what it costs. The number is on the pricing page along with where the hours go, and you get a fixed quote in writing before any work starts.

You also get the source code, always. Your domain stays in your name. If you decide in a year that you would rather work with somebody else, you can, and everything goes with you. I would rather earn the next job than trap you into it.