Greetings! I’m an artist, writer, retired point guard, friend, and, yes, avid pickleball player.
I spent the first part of my career telling stories about science and medicine. Then I told clients' stories through my graphic design and branding work. Toward the end of my career, I told stories about users to improve websites and apps in my role as a UX designer.
Retired, I now write about life as an aging, sometimes grumpy, often sarcastic human.
Find my collage and photography work and my fiber art on Instagram, my art at chrisaraymond.dunked.com, and my design work (prior to retirement) at chrisaraymond.net.
Forty years at a glance
Over the course of my working life, I had some wonderful adventures and some depressing failures.
I reported on medical research and the social sciences for JAMA and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among many national publications, flying around the country to cover conferences in the days when you could show up at the gate 20 minutes before departure.
I designed websites for well-known institutions like the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and well-known public figures, like the late Madeleine Albright—in the days when frames were a major browser innovation.
I spent the last decade of my professional life as a UX designer. As perhaps the oldest person ever hired at a tech startup 😉, I was part of a small team that built and launched Speak Agent, a vocabulary learning platform for English language learners K–12.
At PBS, my last job, I had the privilege of working on sites that helped classroom teachers build better lessons and parents foster their children’s learning and emotional development—during the midst of a pandemic.
Retirement beta
In December 2022, I entered what some folks call the “third age,” also known as retirement. I’m now in retirement “beta phase,” exploring creative projects, volunteering, creating new routines, and getting a lot more sleep. My alarm clock has been put on hiatus.
I post four to six times a month, for publications including The Memoirist, Age of Empathy, Crow’s Feet, The Haven, and The Daily Cuppa.