designer developer
I spent years making dogs look their best. Now I make websites do the same. Same attention to detail, same love for my clients — just fewer baths.
See my work01
School and personal projects I've designed and built.
A responsive movie discovery app powered by the TMDB API. Browse popular, upcoming and top-rated films, search by title or genre, and save favourites to a watchlist. I set up the repo, built the shared TMDB API layer, the About page and the 404 route.
A cozy cursor-chase game. Pick a cat or a dog, and it follows your mouse while you click treats to fill its fullness bar before the 90-second timer runs out. Built with vanilla JavaScript, sprite animation and a tilemap loader.
An online store for a members' golf club, with pro shop gear, lesson bookings and gift cards. Built on a customized Shopify theme.
The site you're on, designed and built from scratch as a static site. Hand-cut photo stickers float around my name, with light and dark modes, a thumb-friendly mobile nav and accessible FAQ drop-downs.
A WooCommerce store on WordPress, just getting started for my Online Stores course. It will include product bundles, add-on options, subscriptions, shipping zones and a secure checkout.
A website for a real local business, from first sketches to launch. Designed around what their customers need to find quickly, and built to be easy for the owner to keep up to date.
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Comfortable on both sides of the handoff, plus what I brought with me from nail art and grooming.
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I'm Talia, a web design and development student who loves the space where visual design meets code. I care about interfaces that feel calm, clear, and a little bit playful.
My path here hasn't been a straight line. I trained at Western Dog Grooming School in 2018 and spent more than five years as a dog groomer, at PetSmart, Nirvana Pet Resort and UniPet Grooming Salon in Richmond. Grooming taught me to understand what each client needs, keep a full day of appointments on track, and sweat the small details. A nail art design course in Chengdu sharpened my eye for colour and composition. In March 2026 I finished BCIT's Office Administration with Technology certificate, along with Microsoft Office Specialist certifications in Word and Excel. Now I'm in BCIT's Front-End Web Development certificate program, and I recently completed a remote digital marketing internship with Ignite Local, focused on SEO and AI optimization.
I'm looking for design and/or front-end development roles where I can keep learning and ship thoughtful work.
Before my career change into web design and development, I took a course in nail art design in Chengdu, China. The nail sets in the stickers up top are my own designs, and I hand-painted every one.
In 2018 I took a dog grooming course for my late poodle, Tiya, so she could live a better life. Caring for her taught me to slow down and pay attention to what someone else needs.
Nail art and grooming both come down to details and care for the person (or pup) you're making something for. That's the same mindset I bring to designing and building for the web.
kind words
Instructors, teammates, and clients on what it's like to work with me.
Having Talia as a student for the second time has been a wonderful experience. She is creative, diligent, a great listener, and consistently shows a high level of curiosity and a willingness to learn. Despite the blended format of the program, Talia went above and beyond to make collaboration seamless and enjoyable for her classmates. She is a dedicated student who brings immense value to any classroom, and I recommend her wholeheartedly.
Talia is such a great teammate to work with. She's hardworking, helpful, honest, and always quick to jump in when something needs to get done. She communicates really well and brings such a positive, genuine energy to the team. She's someone you can rely on, and she somehow makes working on a stressful project a lot more fun.
Talia's been a fantastic teammate, bringing thoughtful ideas to the planning process and a collaborative approach that makes everyone feel heard and supported.