Corporate and academic stowaway; designer-developer, educator, and wordsmith.
Aquent Gymnasium
Design a career you love with our free online courses and tutorials on design, development, UX, prototyping, accessibility, and career skills.
Gymnasium — Aquent’s free online learning platform (launched in 2013), reaching more than 160,000 students worldwide in over 200 countries.
Design lead and education specialist from 2015 to 2025, overseeing and crafting visual and front-end design and development with a focus on accessibility and inclusive user experience design. Collaborated on and co-led course creation and development, email and social campaign design, and technical, marketing, and UX copywriting.
Gymnasium — Homepage refresh promoting the tutorial, Getting Started with Image Generation in Midjourney: designed in early 2025, featuring a new Eleventy front-end and updated marketing website.
Eleventy front-end, archived April 5, 2025 — featured homepage hero: Exploring AI’s Role in Accessibility (livestream).
Jekyll front-end (pre-Eleventy), archived December 12, 2024 — featured homepage hero: Gymnasium Wins Again! (in the news).
Gymnasium — Learner-facing course syllabus for Modern Web Design with Aaron Gustafson of Microsoft: designed during our early 2025 refresh, showcasing seamless visual design, thoughtful UX, and a behind-the-scenes Open edX migration from Hawthorn (2018) to Redwood (2024).
UX Design: Prototyping as Process webinar — Promotional social artwork for Twitter and LinkedIn: designed in May, 2019.
ASA(American Staffing Association) Elevate Awards — Aquent Gymnasium won (and continues to win) the American Staffing Association’s first-ever Elevate Award in (another in , and again in ), honoring the most outstanding work-based learning programs in the staffing and recruiting industry; original photo credit to Andrew Miller.
The Gymnasium Blog on Medium — Details of various blog hero artwork from 2017–2019: designed in 2017–2019.
The Gymnasium Blog on Medium — All blog artwork from 2017–2019, except Hacking Horace Mann’s Loftiest Dream (credit to Andrew Miller): designed in 2017–2019. The (Aquent) Gymnasium Blog on Medium, archived state from May 6, 2023 and May 30, 2025: designed in 2019–2025.
Gymnasium Logo Alternate — Square logo design, used on The Gymnasium Blog on Medium: designed in July, 2017.
Media Queries for Popular Devices — Promotional cheat sheet webpage: designed and developed in August, 2015.
Leonard Greco Health Logotype
Designed the initial logotype, contributed to the visual identity, and advised on typographic style for Leonard Greco Health, a professional photography and video brand, delivering a cohesive brand launch tailored to the health-tech industry: completed and in use since Spring 2025.
Logotype shown in context. Explore the live site at leonardgrecohealth.com.
Detail of logotype and typography, shown on a small-screen (mobile) view from a project page.
Paul Marciano, CPA
Modern, high-performance, and accessible mobile-first single-page website for Paul Marciano, CPA and company: developed all content, from language to markup, excluding photography; designed and maintained from 2013–2025.
A walk-through of the Paul Marciano, CPA single-page website. The site features a branded landing screen with calls to action, expanded navigation, an at-a-glance Services section, a Meet the Team section, a detailed owner bio, and a closing Contact area with directions.
Homepage landing screen, widescreen (desktop) view. Explore the live site at paulmarcianocpa.com. Filed under: Making taxes look good — and business even better. Proudly supporting small businesses.
Dizzy Moods Lettering
Bespoke lettering for exhibition window display and catalog, for Boston and NYC based photographer Leonard Greco: designed in 2015.
Award-winning promotional website for tween, teen, and young adult book author Erin Dionne; 15th Annual HOW Interactive Design Awards, Merit Winner, 2013: designed and developed in 2013.
Promotional website for Boston and NYC based visual artist Cassandra Louise Baker: designed and developed in 2010; updated in 2022 (for small screens). R.I.P.
Homepage, wide-screen (desktop) view.
Work details page, wide-screen (desktop) view.
Hypnotic Discotheque Fascination
Clever use of color and music transform a simple concept into a fun game.
A 40 second demo of Hypnotic Discotheque Fascination. (Alternatively, listen to Martin Straka’s hypnotic soundtrack via Bandcamp or Spotify.)
Dot Display Font
HTML and CSS based display font (a decade prior to pure CSS lettering becoming a thing): designed in 2009 (in use 2009–2012).
Dot Display CSS font specimen (detail).
Dot Display heading featured on Velle’s Boutique webpage.
Dot Display heading (in blue) featured on Velle’s Couture Soundtracks webpage.
Create Magazine
Signing On — Editorial design for Create Magazine: designed in 2005.
Contributing designer for Create Magazine, Winter 2005, Boston edition. (Later used as a typography project, while teaching at Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts. See example student classwork by William Hekking.)
Velle Logotypes
Bespoke logotypes for web-based magazine and studio Velle, and imprint: designed in 2005 (in use 2005–2012).
Velle logotype; based on a letterform sketch by Jan Tschichold.
China Fon House logotype — Velle magazine imprint; inspired by the work of the Designers Republic (tDR).
Faculty Exhibition Poster
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) — Montserrat College of Art Faculty Exhibition Poster, 3-color screen print on plexiglass, 18 in. × 24 in. (~ A2), printed by Anthony Landry (at Proletariat Press): designed in 2004.
Hi, I’m Justin Gagne — a designer, front-end web designer and developer, and educator (I design, build, and teach) who champions accessible writing, better typography, and inclusive design. French Canadian-American, Prague-based, Boston-remote — with Maine roots and fluency in the lingua franca of HTML and CSS (pardon, sans Français).
More often than not, I design in code, in the browser, in Figma, Sketch, or any tool other than a hammer. And let’s not forget about paper. (Low-fi paper prototyping for the win.)
Designing in the browser lets me test and refine designs in real-time. Within hours, a production-ready prototype is available for team feedback. It’s not a race. The details and discussions matter. It’s about a seamless flow from design to development for more iterations, leading to better user experiences for everyone. Fewer silos — thank you.
I’m a designer who believes writing is designing. And the virtues of lean content — it’s RAD (reliable, authentic, and direct). I care about language, whether content or code. Visual design and imagery, too, of course, though tend to come a little later. Forget getting hung up on pixel perfection (at least for now) and focus on the content first. Sure, make images talk and sing even, but keep the language easy to read and conversational.
While we’re at it, making content and experiences accessible and inclusive isn’t a task or requirement. It’s a fundamental part of who I am and how I approach my work. Accessibility first is not an add-on — it’s a way of seeing and doing.
Out of (home) office, I do — and teach — a leader and educator at heart, teaching design and writing courses. I’ve taught at colleges in and around Boston for two decades (and then some). Make it in Massachusetts institutions: Emmanuel College, Montserrat College of Art, and the former Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts. I currently work and teach in Prague. Na zdraví!
After hours, you can find me — out on my next foodie quest, salvaging old tech, or enjoying a cozy rainy evening at home.
Plain Vanilla — No tools, no frameworks — just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Delish!
Eject disk. — Happy cog therapy with an air bag, courtesy of the brilliant Greg Storey (Postscript: Seeing masthead used made me feel right at home from my newspaper days — thank you. 1 A.M. is press time.)
Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress, and — If Not React, Then What?
I am the law — IE: RIP or BRB? performed by Bruce “I Don’t Do Shopping” Lawson
