Kait Sykes 💫
I’m a developer, designer, mentor, and really good creative thinker.
As a Digital Developer and Designer at the Royal Ontario Museum, I hang out with dinosaur bones and code cool things in the basement under them. Before that, I worked at House of Anansi Press and Groundwood Books as an eBook developer, which was my gateway drug to learning code.
I believe well-commented code should be mandatory for every developer and a walk around the block will fix just about any coding problem. My current toolkit includes HTML5, CSS3, Sass, JavaScript, jQuery, React, Node.js, PHP, Drupal, WordPress, and Adobe Creative Suite.
When I’m not coding, I’m probably hanging out with my dog or working on reading 100 books every year. I’m also fond of piney trees and winter, excellent typography, objectively terrible country music, and — much to my chagrin and eternal disappointment — the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Projects
ROM Dior iPads
I took over managing, designing, and developing the in-exhibition iPad displays for the ROM Dior show. I also updated the design to work on smaller iPads for several of the museums the exhibition is travelling to. This involved working with several curators and IT teams located remotely.
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- Design
Wedding Website for Brandie & Dylan
I designed and developed a wedding website for two friends, built in React with a detailed form for guests to submit their RSVP.
- React
- JavaScript
- ES6
- Netlify
- Git
- Design
ROM Treasures of a Desert Kingdom Exhibition Page
The Treasures of a Desert Kingdom page was the first to utilize a new Drupal content type for exhibition pages designed and developed by myself and Yoon Kang. In addition to overseeing the design and development for each exhibition page, I acted as a web project manager and created a content strategy for the exhibition.
- JavaScript
- PHP
- Drupal
- Design
ROM Strategic Direction
A digitization of the ROM’s Strategic Direction, originally a print booklet. Built with PHP.
- JavaScript
- PHP
- Design
ROM Magazine
In anticipation of a large-scale redesign and redevelopment coming in the next few years, my team and I created a content strategy and developed new Drupal content types aligning with it. One live example is the ROM magazine, for which I developed a strategy for re-purposing content from the print ROM magazine for web and developed a Drupal content type and page views to display the articles.
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- ES6
- API/AJAX
- Git
- Gulp
ROM WPY microsite
I re-designed and developed the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 microsite using Drupal, PHP, JavaScript, and jQuery. This project involved a redesign of the 2017 microsite based on the Natural History Museum’s new logo for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.
- JavaScript
- PHP
- Drupal
- Design
Laundry Lessons
A digital laundry helper providing explanations for the icons on your clothing tags, this project is built using React, React Router, and Firebase. It also uses the Google Maps JavaScript API and the Google Places API to locate nearby laundromats. I designed and coded everything, although the laundry advice is mostly from my mother.
- React
- JavaScript
- ES6
- API/AJAX
- Git
- Gulp
- Design
Pottergalore
Built using React and React Router, this project is a play on Pottermore’s Harry Potter quizzes. Created in partnership with Natalie Kwok, we each worked on the design and development of this project. I was also responsible for writing the quizzes.
- React
- JavaScript
- ES6
- Git
- Gulp
- Design
Herd of Words
This jQuery cow-themed lorem ipsum generator was a project created just-for-fun with Kitty Yau. We each worked on the design, development, and the giant list of cow words.
- JavaScript
- jQuery
- ES6
- Git
- Gulp
- Design