Josh is Abrev'd.

I miss the web
that was a place.

I miss the web that was a place. It was a place where you could go and find something new, something interesting, something that you didn't know about. It was a place where you could share your ideas, your creations, your thoughts with others. It was a place where you could learn new things, explore new ideas, and connect with others.

There are signs that it is happening again. The web is becoming a place again. The barrier to entry that made the web great before is disappearing. The web used to stand out as an inexpensive place to post your ideas available to the world, at the cost of learning a simple markup language. Today, even after decades of complex libraries, frameworks, and designs systems have reduced much of it to giant series of themeforest examples. The opporunity to build something new and unique is reemerging in ways we have yet to comprehend. I believe we are at the cusp of a new golden age of the web. And I can't wait to see what we build.

There is no path pattern. There is no template. There is just the next thing I want to make.

Below: a truncated CV, a few of the tools I keep handy, a few of the things I’m building, and a way to say hello.

Joshua Jackson

Director of Product Design · UX Strategy · Design Systems

Plymouth, MA · Remote-ready · abrevd.com · linkedin.com

Profile

Thirty-year design practitioner with a comb-shaped career - deep expertise in UX, product design, and design systems, paired with hands-on fluency in front-end development, AI-assisted tooling, team leadership, and cross-functional strategy. Equally at home shaping vision in a boardroom and shipping work in Figma. Spent the past decade leading design for complex digital products across entertainment, healthcare, enterprise SaaS, and live events. At my best when I can plant roots in a single brand and product, lead a team of designers toward something worth being proud of, and evangelize that work publicly.

Experience

Director of Product Design Apr 2023 - May 2026

Halo Media LLC · Remote

Led product design direction across a portfolio of enterprise and consumer digital products for clients including Disney, UMG, and healthcare and SaaS organizations.
Pioneered an SDUI/Flutter mobile application architecture for Disney, establishing Figma as a living source of truth and building custom Figma plugins to automate design evaluation and developer handoff - compressing design-to-development cycles significantly.
Designed and prototyped a low-code compositional UI toolset enabling upstream teams to test app layouts and content configurations without engineering involvement.
Developed two internal productivity tools using AI-assisted development (Claude, Cursor): a company-wide Gmail signature generator and a highly configurable Jira-integrated intake form system - reducing onboarding friction and improving project pipeline visibility.
Built and launched a number of web applications - used internally as a proof-of-concept to shift team perspective on AI-assisted design and development workflows.
Actively exploring agentic design tooling and AI-augmented workflows as a core area of practice.

Design Director Jun 2020 - Apr 2023

Halo Media LLC · Massachusetts

Managed a team of designers, implementing skills-based allocation to match talent to project needs and raise team-wide output quality.
Served as senior design lead across client projects spanning music artist experiences (UMG), ticketing SaaS platforms (kiosks, administration, purchasing flows), bot mitigation software, and enterprise workflow management applications.
Spearheaded the company’s transition from Sketch/InVision to Figma - leading tool evaluation, change management, and full platform administration.
Mentored a junior designer who became one of the agency’s most sought-after team members, growing from early-career to a fully autonomous contributor.
Managed design-phase project coordination and worked directly with clients and stakeholders on problem framing, product strategy, and delivery.
Operated across ClickUp, Notion, and Jira to coordinate design workflows and cross-team project visibility.

UX Consultant Oct 2018 - Jun 2020

Abbreviated Media · Plymouth, MA

Led a complete information architecture overhaul, rebrand, and WordPress build for CMEEC, a Connecticut-based energy company - including page builder implementation, staff training, data migration, and SEO tooling.
Managed Shopify e-commerce operations for Decas Farms, overseeing product launches, template customization, feature implementation, and brand refresh.
Served as design and UX lead for Digios, an early digital art NFT marketplace - responsible for branding, UI experimentation, prototyping, and user experience testing.
Continued UX work for Halo Media during this period across UMG artist sites, ticketing platforms, and Shopify builds.

VP, Digital Experience Sep 2016 - Sep 2018

Spartan Race, Inc. · Boston, MA

Drove UX strategy and brand cohesion across all global digital touchpoints, working closely with marketing and race operations.
Managed a $1-2M annual budget spanning IT infrastructure, cross-departmental software licensing, race timing equipment, and global travel for timing teams.
Partnered with CFO and CEO to align technology investment with company growth priorities; transitioned to a best-in-class managed IT service provider.
Produced some of the strongest design work of my time at Spartan, advancing the vision for a unified global digital brand experience.

Director of Digital Initiatives Jul 2014 - Sep 2016

Spartan Race, Inc. · Boston, MA

Hired to rescue a failing agency-led website rebuild - reframed scope, reined in stakeholder-driven feature creep, and assembled and led an internal team to bring the project to launch.
Built and managed a web team of a full-stack developer and two content managers supporting domestic and global (multi-language) operations.
Stood up a dedicated marketing web team and drove adoption of a JAMstack/Contentful-based self-service landing page system, dramatically reducing turnaround time for campaign assets.
Deployed Slack organization-wide - one of the earlier enterprise adoptions of the platform.
Managed all marketing technology integrations, analytics, and tag management for Spartan’s global web presence.

New Media Manager Apr 2014 - Jul 2014

United Electronic Industries · Walpole, MA

Returned to execute a social media strategy originally proposed before my departure - launched Facebook and YouTube presence, planned and built a video production studio, produced a regular content schedule, and implemented a lead generation system for the sales team.

Senior Design Lead Jul 2013 - Apr 2014

Spartan Race, Inc. · Boston, MA

Led a full rebrand of all company collateral across print and digital - produced Spartan’s first formal Brand Guidelines and Playbook.
Grew the creative team 4x, establishing a respected in-house design department.
Built and launched lead generation pages and a microsite supporting Joe De Sena’s first book.
Standardized email templates, social media imagery, and brand consistency across all channels.

Creative Director Jan 2013 - Jun 2013

GroupUs

Six-month engagement at an early-stage mobile startup; product pivoted from iOS-first to Android mid-build.
Led all design and front-end development - brand identity, website, and UX/UI design for two versions of a native mobile application across iOS and Android.
Contributed to UI coding for Android when product complexity required the platform pivot.

Art Director Jan 2011 - Dec 2012

Pax Memoriam, Inc. · Plymouth, MA

Owned all visual design and advertising for an online memorial platform - corporate identity, web application UI, product collateral, training videos, and paid social and search campaigns.
Designed, typeset, and produced a full-length book for self-publication - cover design, interior layout, prepress, and vendor coordination.

Senior Graphic Designer Aug 2006 - Jan 2011

United Electronic Industries · Walpole, MA

Sole designer responsible for all marketing output: email campaigns (design and list management), annual product catalog, trade show graphics, digital advertising, and direct mail.
Rebuilt the company’s entire web architecture and e-commerce platform from the ground up.
Took on IT and server infrastructure management - including VoIP deployment, load balancing, and systems administration - in addition to design responsibilities.
Automated core workflows and produced comprehensive process documentation (three full binders) to ensure knowledge transfer - enabling a seamless handoff to a successor with minimal transition time.

Skills & Tools

Design & UX: Product design, UX strategy, design systems, information architecture, interaction design, prototyping, usability testing, SDUI, component-driven design.
Tools: Figma (advanced, including plugin development), Sketch, InVision, Adobe Creative Suite, Zeplin.
Development: HTML/CSS, JavaScript fundamentals, Flutter (working knowledge), JAMstack, Contentful, Shopify, WordPress.
AI & Agentic Tooling: Claude, Cursor, Midjourney, AI-assisted development and design workflow design.
Leadership & Process: Team building, skills-based resource allocation, design mentorship, change management, stakeholder communication, Jira, ClickUp, Notion, Slack.

Early Career

Began in graphic design at FLIR Systems (then Inframetrics), brought in to take desktop publishing in-house when outside agencies were consuming the marketing budget. Owned catalogs, calendars, sales material, giveaways, posters, trade-show booth and hallway graphics, and print/digital advertising - learning ad specs, print buying, and vendor coordination from scratch and effectively serving as the company’s print buyer of record. The shift to in-house production saved millions in annual collateral costs and modernized the company’s DTP workflow. Concurrently took a production-assistant internship at September Productions in Boston, repeatedly requested back by central booking.

After Inframetrics was acquired, joined Computer Boards - which rebranded to Measurement Computing during my tenure - in Middleborough, MA, as Senior Graphic Designer. Owned all marketing collateral and visual identity through the rebrand. Designed brand and full GUI iconography (across two product versions) for SoftWIRE, their visual-programming-language spin-off LLC. Built interactive product-configurator UIs and software demonstration prototypes for the web - among the company’s early forays into interactive product experiences. Co-built a homebrew email marketing system with the engineering team, picking up HTML, early JavaScript, and the dual-format (plain-text + rich HTML) realities of email design and delivery in the era when companies still ran their own mail servers. Contributed substantively to the website and e-commerce platform.

Went independent after Measurement Computing - continued consulting for MCC and took on web and print work for a series of startups. Later picked up an extended contract in Las Vegas building the brand for Relieva, a company selling medical diagnostic and chiropractic spinal-decompression equipment. Built the brand from scratch and produced marketing and sales material for Relieva and its clients, with a heavy specialty in anatomical illustration - full-spine diagrams, vertebral-segment illustrations, herniated-disc explainers - produced at volume across the engagement.

Full details available on request.