Hire me! You know you want to.

Want to know about me first?
Fair enough then. My name is Chad VanWalsum, and I'm a designer, photographer, and father. I always have my Macbook in the same bag as my camera gear and I’m always ready to enter in a design cage match and take photos while I’m doing it.

What kind of background do you have?
A very soft gradient going from #efeeee to #f0f0f0. I spent my high school days on the computer surfing AOL on a 14.4 modem. This is also when I started designing. I started out with Chad’s Ranma Page of Cool Stuff and was soon working at Impulse9 Designs making gaming websites for people to drool over. Instead of going to the prom or homecoming I was sitting in the journalism room either developing some film from the football game or laying out the entertainment section of the high school newspaper. Yeah, I was a loser, but I loved it. From there I moved across the country to attend Grand Valley State University where I lasted a year. I wanted a more hands on design education so I moved over to Kendall College of Art and Design and received my BFA in Visual Communications; Print Media, and my minor in photography. Since then I’ve tried flashing around my $30,000 piece of paper to anyone who will look at it, but I think my wife hid it after we had some friends over.

What about your Experience?
I’ve been doing web design and front-end development now for 12 years, but only the past 4 years have been with that all important piece of paper that says that I should know what I’m doing. Over those 12 years I’ve been a freelancer, an intern, a 'webmaster', a jr. web designer, and a graphic designer. I’ve also had the privilege of working for many great creative directors who have taught me more in my time with them then any college could teach in 10 years. I’ve also been privileged to work with these clients: Wolverine World Wide, ButterBall Farms, 5/3 River Bank Run, GR Kolman, Amway/Alticor/Quixtar, Manatech, Escape International, SmartOnline, 1800-Pharmacy, Bissell, and many many more.

So, how can we get a hold of you?
Call me, email me, IM me, you can even knock on my door at 3am. The fastest and best way though is to call me. My digits are: 616.706.9235. Call me day or night.

What about your work, where can we see that?
Right here! Thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can view all my work here, well, my selected work. There’s always the client that wants you to use their nieces photos and spit stuff out in a few days or insists on animated icons for backgrounds.... Just click on the little navigation button that says ‘My Work’. This is also an easy way out from updating my traditional portfolio that was packed up years ago and hasn't been seen since.