JD Hooge is getting major recognition in the world of Web site design.

It’s sort of odd, considering his goal as a designer is to not be noticed at all.

“The goal is to be more transparent, so it’s not obvious that you’re looking at a Web site or a button,” Hooge says.

Hooge, a 1996 graduate of Lawrence High School, is only 27, but he’s already amassed an impressive portfolio of Web sites he’s designed while employed at Second Story, a design firm in Portland, Ore.

His work includes:

¢ “America on the Move,” a site about the history of transportation for Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

¢ “Forces of Nature,” a site on natural disasters for National Geographic.

¢ “Anne Frank: The Writer,” about Frank and the Holocaust, for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

His current project is a site for Starbucks, which traces the process of coffee production from the bean to the cup.

Hooge was recently named one of 30 top visual artists under age 30 by Print magazine. He also has several Flash Film Festival nominations under his belt, as well as other design awards.

JD Hooge, a 1996 graduate of Lawrence High School, is only 27, but he's already designed an impressive portfolio of Web sites. Hooge was recently named one of 30 top visual artists under age 30 by Print magazine.

Lawrence roots

Hooge – whose name rhymes with “bogey” – says he first had his interest in art sparked in an LHS drawing class taught by Pat Nemchock, who is now retired.

“He was talented,” Nemchock says, “but so many kids are talented, especially in the arts. It’s hard to transition from school to the real world. He was very successful at it.”

Hooge received his art training at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, where he graduated in 2000. But he didn’t think much about Web design until late in school.

“Web design was still really, really young and not happening yet on any grand level,” he says. “When I dove into the whole programming aspect of it, I learned as much as I could reading books.”

After graduation, he and three classmates formed Forum Design Studio in Milwaukee. After 9-11 and what Hooge calls the “burst of the Web bubble,” the partners decided to split up.

It was then that he hooked up with Second Story, which specializes in bringing museum collections and historical topics to life on the Web and in interactive exhibits. The firm has only 12 employees, despite its impressive client list.

“We make a really strong effort to keep it small,” Hooge says. “We want to stay grounded and not get too big. We only take on as many projects as we can handle.”

No ‘style’

Though most of his designs utilize Flash, an interactive animation technology, Hooge says his goal isn’t for his sites to have a particular “look.”

He realized on his first two assignments at Second Story – a site for the “Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker” video game and the Anne Frank site, which he was working on simultaneously – that he would need to be flexible on his designs.

“Basically my goal is to not have a style,” Hooge says. “A lot of people in the design/illustration world strive to find my style – who I am and how I visually represent that. I don’t really want to have a style. With everything I do – ‘Zelda’ and then having a Web site for Anne Frank – I can’t have something I’m locked into.”

Hooge’s co-workers are impressed with his work.

“I think he spends a lot of time really thinking about what the visitor experience is going to be,” says Brad Johnson, creative director and co-founder of Second Story. “He tries to pare down the design to make it really serve the purpose the best it can.

“There are never any unnecessary decorative elements, nothing unnecessary. It’s very direct. Oftentimes, I think things have a cleaner, more minimal approach.”

‘Simple’ designs

• In the Halls: What makes a good Web site? (10-18-05)

Johnson says Hooge takes his work seriously.

“He’s very professional and committed to making what he does the best it can be,” Johnson says. “He really takes ownership and puts what he believes is the best into it.”

Hooge says he’s not sure exactly what direction the relatively young field of Web design will take in the next few years. He’s pretty sure, however, that it will include more video and more user-contributed content.

And he says the goal should be to keep the designs simple.

“The hardest solution is the simplest solution, always,” he says. “It’s really tough to find that. Everyone loves the Apple iPod because it’s so simple. It’s not easy to design an iPod, but some brilliant person came up with the design.”