Version history of a designer.

Three more ISN case studies landed — Training Compliance Report, In-App Landing Page, and Publish Trainings — each with gated design artifacts, full overview and process tabs, and wired into the components index. The photography gallery got a real fix: masonry layout using CSS columns so photos display at their natural proportions, a lightbox for clicking into any image with keyboard navigation, and editorial callout cards that now actually show up. Components index updated to surface all eight projects.

First full build of shawncastillo.com as a design system. Token layer, global styles, and component library established from the ground up. Every page built: landing, source, changelog, foundations, photography, patterns, lab, and all four core ISN case studies. The Contractor License case study also landed in this session. Gate system, dark/light mode, token toggle, accent cycler, and mobile nav all shipped and working.

This version is about what happens when the workday ends. Lab projects, freelance threads, and a portfolio that doubles as a design system. The day job keeps the craft sharp — the side work keeps the curiosity alive. Every project here exists because something needed to be figured out, built, or explored on its own terms.

The problems here were genuinely hard — contractor management, workforce compliance, training systems used by thousands of users across industries. The product had real complexity and the design team was finally being treated as a strategic partner rather than a production resource.

Earth Class Mail was a digital mailbox service — physical mail received, scanned, and delivered digitally anywhere in the world. It was the first role where the work stopped being about how things looked and started being about how they worked. Product thinking took root here.

A six-month graphic design and digital marketing role at ISSA — a fitness certification company. Purely visual work, and good for the range. But it made one thing unmistakably clear: product design was the path. Sometimes the clearest signal of where you're going is a role that reminds you where you don't want to stay.

Small teams, tight timelines, and a little bit of everything. Early in-house design work taught the lesson that no design education quite prepares you for — that perfection and usability aren't always the same goal, and knowing the difference is what separates a designer from someone who makes things look good. The work needs to work.