Hello! I’m Jag Talon. šµš (He/him) I’ve been working at DuckDuckGo since 2014. I started as a frontend developer at first, but now I’m working as a full-time product designer. In my spare time, I work on tiny software tools and generative art. I also hosted a podcast in the past.
I write on this blog, but I also post on Micro.blog. You can e-mail me as well if you’d like to say hi or if you have any feedback. I enjoy getting e-mail.
Personal Projects
Various tiny tools (2021ā)
I’ve been making tiny tools for myself and releasing them on Itch.io. I made a tiny ambient noise player for relaxing or focusing, a tool that gives life to your Caps Lock keys, and a countdown timer that barks. https://jagtalon.itch.io
Generative Art (2020)
I’ve been learning about using code to create art recently, and I’m absolutely enjoying it. It fascinates me that a set of rules could create something artistic. It’s also very satisfying for me to see my work on my walls in the real world.
You can find my work on a dedicated generative art page, and some of them are even for sale on Etsy.
Friends Talk Frontend Podcast (2017)
I ran a frontend-focused podcast called Friends Talk Frontend (iTunes) with my buddy Katherine in the past. It’s where we got to talk to amazing people about their habits, how they got to where they are now, and what their day-to-day life was like. It still blows my mind that I got to talk to people that I look up to online!
Speaking of podcasts, I was also lucky enough to be interviewed on the Codepen Podcast about work and how I got myself into CSS.
Web Animation Tutorials (2016)
Before I started the Friends Talk Frontend podcast, I had tutorial screencasts on YouTube. I was all about animations on the web at that time, so I thought I’d be fun to show people that it’s super easy to get started on CSS Animations and the Web Animations API.
During this time, I also recreated different loading animations from products like Slack, Asana, and iMessage. I wanted to see if I could try and get my own web-based imitation to look as close to the real thing as possible. (I wrote about it in Tiny Animations, too.)
Work Projects
Dictionary Instant Answer Redesign (2021)
I got to work on the Dictionary Instant Answer many years ago when I was a frontend engineer (9 years ago!), and Iām glad that I got to work on it again as a designer.
This redesign was also mentioned in DuckDuckGo’s 2021 Review.
Embedded Facebook Blocking (2021)
I designed a feature that blocks Facebook’s embedded content on websites. That can either be embedded comments, videos, posts, groups, pages, and logins. This limits the amount of data that Facebook can gather from you. I created a lot of design variations for this project, but we ultimately landed on a simple, unobtrusive version that you see below.
This project was also mentioned in DuckDuckGo’s 2021 Review.
Brand Guidelines (2020)
I worked on the design of the initial company brand book. I worked on the layout and organization of the book, but the content was a multi-person effort. The book was laid out in Figma, and it covered topics such as brand identity, logo design, typography, color, and brand usage guides.
Extension Redesign (2020)
We redesigned the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extension on Chromium-based browsers and Firefox to improve comprehension and hierarchy. We also worked on supporting dark mode! You can find this on Dribbble as well.
Homepage Redesign (2020)
We worked with Matt Anderson to create this homepage variant for DuckDuckGo. Desktop background is from Unsplash, the desktop mockups from Facebook Design, and the Safari mockup is from the Figma Community. This is also on Dribbble.
Report Broken Site (2020)
When things break on iOS, iPadOS, Android, and our browser extensions, you’ll run into this report form that we made. These types of forms are often tedious and boring, so we made sure to make the form easy to fill out and paired it with an illustration from Matt Anderson. I made This is also on Dribbble.
Privacy Heroes (2018)
We partnered with ProtonMail, Brave, Tresorit, and Threema to create this page to accompany our ad on EasyJet. I designed and implemented the page, and the illustrations are from Matt Anderson. I also snuck in tiny SVG animations on the page.
DuckDuckGo Spread Page + Newsletter Page (2018)
I implemented and designed the Newsletter Page which lets people sign up for the privacy crash course and newsletter. I also got to implement the and the Spread Page as well.
DuckDuckGo Blog (2018)
We’re running Ghost.org for the company blog, and I worked on modifying the default theme to match our style and branding.
Instant Answers Maintainer (2014)
I was one of the core maintainers of duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-spice and duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies where I helped improve and review open source contributions to DuckDuckGo. These Instant Answers are written in Perl, JavaScript, and CSS.