Corporate and academic stowaway; designer-developer, educator, and wordsmith.
Aquent Gymnasium
Gymnasium — Aquent's free online learning platform (launched in 2013), reaching more than 160,000 learners worldwide with free courses and tutorials in design, development, UX, prototyping, accessibility, and career skills.
From 2015 to 2025, I served as design lead, overseeing visual and frontend design with a focus on accessibility and inclusive user experience. I co-led course creation, marketing campaigns, and content strategy — helping drive a 200% enrollment increase and multiple industry awards.
Explore the full case study to learn how a recent redesign of the marketing site and updated LMS modernized a global e-learning platform, improved performance, and created a more inclusive, accessible learning experience.
Highlight: In July 2025, I co-presented a case study talk, Seemingly Seamless: How We Improved the Open edX Learner Experience and Made Our Lives Easier, at the Open edX Conference in Paris with Roman Edirisinghe, sharing how we designed and developed a scalable, content-first learning experience for Aquent Gymnasium.
View Source: Seemingly Seamless slides via GitHub.
Gymnasium — Homepage refresh promoting the tutorial, Getting Started with Image Generation in Midjourney: designed in early 2025, featuring a new Eleventy frontend and updated marketing website.
Jekyll frontend (pre-Eleventy), archived December 12, 2024 — featured homepage hero: Gymnasium Wins Again! (in the news).
Eleventy frontend, archived April 5, 2025 — featured homepage hero: Exploring AI’s Role in Accessibility (livestream).
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).
View more Gymnasium work…
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
Bespoke logotype and visual identity for Leonard Greco Health, a professional photography and video brand serving the health-tech industry.
I designed the logotype, developed the visual identity system, and provided typographic direction for a cohesive brand launch. In use since Spring 2025.
Logotype shown in context on leonardgrecohealth.com.
Detail of logotype and typography, shown on a small-screen (mobile) view from a project page.
Logotype variations: inline and stacked layouts for different applications.
Paul Marciano, CPA
Modern, accessible, and high-performance website for Paul Marciano, CPA. A mobile-first single-page design serving a small business client for over a decade.
I developed all content strategy, UX writing, and copywriting, then designed and built the site with semantic, accessible, and performant markup. After 12 years of serving the practice, the business changed hands, and the domain redirects to the new owner.
Filed under: Making taxes look good — and business even better. Proudly supporting small businesses.
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.
Archive
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.
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).
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.
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. I write, design, and build for the web, championing accessible writing, better typography, and inclusive design. French Canadian-American with Maine roots, ex-Boston remote, now Prague-based. Writing and designing in HTML and CSS since 1998, the web is my native language.
I write and design in a text editor, in the browser, in Figma, Sketch, and on paper (low-fi prototyping for the win). Designing where the work lives means I test and refine in real-time. Production-ready prototypes are available within hours for team feedback — creating a direct loop from design to development that makes room for more iterations and better outcomes.
I’m a designer who believes writing is designing. I’m a champion of lean content — it’s RAD: reliable, authentic, and direct. Language matters, whether it’s content, code, or a comment. Visual design and imagery matter, too, but content comes first. Get the words right, make them easy to read and conversational, and the rest follows.
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 isn’t an add-on — it’s a way of seeing and doing.
I teach writing and design because teaching forces clarity. Breaking things down, rethinking what I thought I knew, and questioning assumptions deepens my own understanding — and that benefits everyone I work with.
For two decades (and then some), I taught at colleges in and around Boston. Make it in Massachusetts™ institutions: Emmanuel College, Montserrat College of Art, and the former Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts. Now I work and teach in Prague. Na zdraví!
After hours, you’ll find me on my next foodie quest, salvaging old tech, or enjoying a cozy rainy (or snowy) 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. Reminder: 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
