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Charlie Gleason

Charlie Gleason

Designer, developer, creative coder, and musician


I’m a lead product designer at Salesforce.

Before that I looked after design and brand at Heroku , design and front-end development for London-based crowdfunding publisher Unbound , co-founded the Melbourne-based social film site Goodfilms, and was the technical lead of the Clemenger BBDO ad agency.

I studied design and computer science, and I like the space between art and code. I also enjoy the blind terror of the creative process, solving difficult problems, and a clean sheet of paper.

I cannot skateboard. I tried, but it was a whole thing.


In my spare time I like to work on micro projects, from tools for creative coding, to tweet-based music videos, to design-focused macOS apps. I also sometimes write about development, contribute to open source, and share resources.

My work has been featured by Google’s Creative Sandbox, and has received numerous awards, including from Awwwards and the FWA.

I believe there are few things more comforting than good documentation.

Education

Masters of Computer Science
RMIT University, Melbourne
2011 - incomplete
Bachelor of Design (Multimedia Design)
First Class Honours
Swinburne School of Design, Melbourne
2004 - 2007

Certifications

  • 2022
    Salesforce User Experience (UX) Designer Certification

Talks, Demos & Workshops

  • 2023
    NewDreamforce: Designing a 5 Star Partner Listing
  • 2019
    Creative Coding London
  • 2017
    JSConf Budapest (Master of Ceremonies)
  • 2016
    Decompress: Blending WebGL and video
  • 2012
    Web Directions South: You are a developer, the internet is your friend
  • 2012
    What Do You Know: So, you are great (and so is Less CSS)
  • 2011
    What Do You Know: How to make your life more awesome with CSS3 media queries

Awards & Achievements

  • 2010
    AIMIA, Nomination for Effectiveness, Pop What You’re Not
  • 2010
    ADMA, Bronze for Art Direction / Craft, Pop What You’re Not
  • 2010
    ADMA, Silver for Automotive, Pop What You’re Not
  • 2010
    MADC, Bronze for Best Microsite, Pop What You’re Not
  • 2007
    Design Institute of Australia, Encouragement Award
  • Volunteering

    • Samaritans
      2022 - ongoing

    Triathlons

    • 2023
      Blenheim Palace Triathlon (Sprint)
    • 2022
      Blenheim Palace Triathlon (Sprint)

    Half Marathons

    • 2022
      Manchester Great Run
    • 2021
      London Landmarks

    Marathons

    • 2017
      London
    • 2015
      London

    Ultra Marathons

    • None


    Selected Projects

    🌊 emoji in a yellow circle
    Music Video
    Lysterfield Lake
    An interactive AI-generated 3D fever dream
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    macOS
    Pika
    An open-source colour picker app for macOS
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    Music Video
    Tweetflight
    A Twitter-powered music video
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    CLI
    Releasecast
    Tooling to help you get from .app to release
    ⛱️ emoji in a yellow circle
    Library
    Sandpit
    An open-source creative-coding library
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    Microsite
    Drag It Down On You
    Lyric karaoke for Ceres, from the album of the same name
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    Music Video
    Rugby
    A GIF-powered music video
    💋 emoji in a yellow circle
    Music Video
    I Will Never Let You Go
    A WebGL-powered music video
    🌏 emoji in a yellow circle
    Landing Page
    Anatole
    Landing page for the orchestral laptop maestro
    🕌 emoji in a yellow circle
    Website
    This Kind of Agility
    Arrested Development episode selector

    Selected Articles

    🔍 emoji in a yellow circle
    web.dev
    Testing Web Design Color Contrast
    An overview of three tools and techniques for testing and verifying accessible color contrast of your design.
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    Medium
    Introducing Pika
    An open-source colour picker app for macOS
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    Heroku
    A Rock Solid, Modern Web Stack
    Rails 5 API + ActiveAdmin + Create React App
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    Medium
    An Almost Static Stack
    How create-react-app, with a couple of modern tools, can make building static sites (with benefits) a breeze
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    Medium
    Announcing Sandpit
    A creative-coding library for the web
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    Medium
    Hot Reloading + create-react-app
    How to get hot reloading working with create-react-app
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    Medium
    An Interactive Music Video With WebGL
    Recreating After Effects in the browser

    Charlie is so gifted and productive. I would work with him again any day. It's been a great professional and personal pleasure to spend these last few years travelling in his company, and seeing the great beauty he's brought to the world through his work on Heroku. May we have the chance to do good things together again someday!

    Black and white headshot of Margaret Francis
    Margaret Francis
    Former GM
    Heroku / Salesforce

    Charlie is one of the most gifted, multi-skilled designers I have ever worked with. He's an amazing collaborator and teammate. Everything he touched made our work 1,000% better.

    Black and white headshot of Ashlyn Watters
    Ashlyn Watters
    Product Architect
    Salesforce

    What impressed me the most was his attention to every detail, his professionalism, his leadership in this space, and also his empathy and kindness. Oh did I mention he is one fantastic designer?

    Black and white headshot of Natalie Malloy
    Natalie Malloy
    Senior Director
    Salesforce

    Charlie’s nicer friends will say great things about his creativity and empathy, which is true, but not interesting. Charlie has hustle. He works and he works and he works, and that is how he got so good at what he does.

    Black and white headshot of John Barton
    John Barton
    CTO
    Amber Electric

    Charlie has a formidable blend of talents: a grounded, empathetic design sense, an artist’s eye for subversion, and the tenacity to do whatever—and learn whatever—is necessary to ship projects.

    Black and white headshot of Glen Maddern
    Glen Maddern
    Systems Engineer
    Cloudflare

    Charlie has a unique, articulate, polished understanding of design, art and how people interact and care for one another.

    Black and white headshot of Will Dayble
    Will Dayble
    Co-founder
    Squareweave

    Charlie is a developer of exceptional talent. He is personable and fun, and these qualities made him universally loved by the team around him.

    Black and white headshot of Becky Bolton
    Becky Bolton
    Former Developer
    Unbound

    Typeset in Commuter Sans and the system font stack.

    Built with NextJS. CSS with Tailwind. Hosted on Heroku.

    Primary illustration inspired by The Design Squiggle.