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About Jeff Rusch

I was trained as a graphic designer at Yale in the 1980s, and have been working with my own clients either full or part time since 1989.

I worked first in print, then multimedia, then the web, and finally full-scale interaction design. I've been a freelancer at some of the most interesting places a designer could work, including Pentagram and Razorfish in San Francisco. I spent many years at UC Berkeley working with faculty designing educational software. This included everything from an interactive Chinese language syllabary to a schematic representation of an evolutionary tree. At one time or another, I’ve also been hired as an interior designer, set designer, photographer, and filmmaker.

My influences include European infographics, traditional japanese aesthetics, Edward Tufte, and Donald Norman. Over the years I have come to see everything I do as interaction design — not just software and products, but even the printed page. How do you use it? How does your eye move across it? How do you proces the information? How do you decide what to do next? My experience in interaction design has led me to a point of view where the user is never wrong, and even beauty and ugliness are not as subjective as they at first seem, but have effects and functions like anything else. My ideal outcome is one where the most useful solution is also the most beautiful, and not by accident, but because usefulness and beauty spring from the same source.

Why specialize in small companies, startups and nonprofits? Because, to put it simply, it fits my scale, my style, and my own desire to help make the world a better place. I find I can be most effective by helping good clients do well. I also enjoy engaging in the world of ideas, and often find clients who are passionate about their ideas to be the most fun to work with.