About Design by Gryffyn's Webspinner

My name is R. Lynn Shell and I have been designing web sites since 1995 when I first published a small website for the dogs I owned and was showing at the time. The "Gryffyn" in "Design by Gryffyn" comes down from my kennel name (Gryffyn's Aeyrie) and the "gryffyn" moniker comes from a time when I was logging in to local bulletin board systems through dial-up before I got an ISP.

After assisting a few friends in getting websites online, I volunteered to handle creating and maintaining some websites on a volunteer basis for various local dog clubs. I began to expand my design and coding skills every chance I got, taking courses in HTML (to learn the theory behind the WYSIWYG), CSS, Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, and Search Engine Optimization. I spent almost 9 years working for a state university in the webdesign field, learning even more about collaboration within a group and web management.

Over the years my webdesign hobby has expanded to hiring out to create online presences for a variety of people and organizations - Design by Gryffyn came to be. My goal in design to create a website that maintains a balance between eyecatching design and usability - the most "wow" site you see will have less impact if it is hard for a visitor to utilize and navigate. After all, once they find your site, you would want them to stay a while and offer them a positive online experience that they will remember, so that they may come back again.