Glitch

Glitch is the friendly community where everyone can create the app of their dreams.

Intro

I worked at Glitch (known then as Fog Creek Software) beginning in December 2007. Glitch was still a beta product, and in March 2018 it came out of beta for public use. Later in 2018, the company made a pivot towards Glitch as our primary product, even renaming the company to match.

I held a number of roles at Glitch during my tenure:

2017

• Content Marketer

2018

• Design Communications Specialist

• Marketing, Design and Communications Lead

2019

• Head of Media

  • a leadership position where I created a department, recruited, interviewed and hired the team, and created best practices for the department

2020

• Creative Strategist / Creative Content Manager

• Senior Creative Strategist / Senior Creative Content Manager

Responsibilities for these roles varied, but they all involved working across teams, along with some level of creative strategy and design implementation.

The Work

When I started at Glitch, there was no design department — there were just a few front-end designers at the company, and none of them did graphic design. I quickly jumped to work, designing everything from editorial hero images to homepage tiles to PTO zines to business cards. Most approvals either came from the head of marketing at the time, or the CEO.

Throughout the year, I also wrote dozens of articles and conducted interviews with Glitch users. These articles were published on Medium, on the Glitch website, and were shared via social media. (Unfortunately, these articles are no longer online now that Glitch has been acquired by Fastly.)

Later in 2018, we started a podcast in conjunction with Vox Media called Function with Anil Dash. I helped design the brand identity for the podcast, oversaw social media for the podcast, and also executive produced the entire first season.

I was promoted to Head of Media in January 2019, and was responsible for creating the department from the ground up. After spending three months establishing the team (interviewing, hiring, onboarding), I was tasked to create the design department at Glitch later in the year. This resulted in our first design hire, Cassie McDaniel, who then went on to staff the newly minted department. As my role shifted out of leadership into an IC role as a creative strategist in 2020, I provided my assistance in interviewing and screening candidates for the design department.

Also in 2020, Glitch launched an editorial platform called Glimmer, which was meant to be a home for content marketing, as well as original pieces by new authors. I helped manage content and oversaw campaigns for the platform in conjunction with the marketing and business development departments. Glitch also launched their first product marketing podcast, Shift Shift Forward, in mid April 2020. The semi-weekly podcast was created to give a behind-the-scenes look into the company and the people who work there.

I mainly used Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, After Effects, Audition) for most creative work at Glitch, and projects were managed using a combination of Notion, Clubhouse, Google Drive, and Trello. (These tools were often used in succession, not all at once.)

Podcast production initially happened in conjunction with Vox Media, but once we began a media team in 2019, production moved in-house. My team used Pro Tools and Audacity for recording and editing, and used Skype and Zencaster for remote tape syncs when necessary.

Prior to my leadership role at Glitch, I oversaw two video projects — :60 creator videos spotlighting prolific users on the platform, and creating a suite of Help Center videos.

The media team, under my supervision in 2019, made a number of videos. I had final say on production and edits, as well as approving budgets for shoots when necessary.

We also shot and produced videos for XOXO Fest in 2019 in Portland, Oregon.

Conclusion

After years of contributing to Glitch's evolution, from my initial role as a Content Marketer to leading the newly formed Media department, my tenure there was a testament to building and scaling creative teams and strategies. Throughout my time there, I maintained a focus on creative strategy, design, and content management, helping to launch a number of projects and initiatives that defined Glitch’s brand identity. Glitch was acquired by Fastly in 2022 and was completely shut down in July 2025.

< Back to Portfolio