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Me, Josh Collinsworth, a bald white guy with a beard and glasses, smiling against a blurry autumn background in a button-up shirt.

Who I am and what I do

I’m currently a Design Engineer at Deno, where my work touches design, development, marketing, and communications. I’ve led and designed full rebrands for Deno itself, Deno Deploy, and JSR, though my main focus has been frontend development and design, bringing unified design systems and components to Deno’s products, documentation, and web presence.

In general, I’m more of a coder who designs than a designer who codes, but my degree is in graphic design, and I’m proficient in both roles. I also bring a background in marketing, teaching, and technical customer support to my work. Ultimately, the common thread in what I do is effective communication.

Prior professional experience

Prior to Deno, I spent a couple of years as a senior frontend developer (L6) at Shopify, focused on marketing for Point of Sale products and services. Before that, I was a Senior JavaScript developer at Aware3 (now FACTS), and a front-end engineer at WP Engine, working on core product features in both roles.

Before becoming a full-time developer, I spent several years as both a senior support lead at Flywheel, and a course instructor for AIM Code School (though it was Interface Code School at the time), where I taught WordPress development, and was solely responsible for both curriculum development and teaching.

Before entering tech, I spent a few years as a graphic designer; worked in foodservice; and was a regularly gigging musician (though not an otherwise successful one).

Other work

As a writer, I authored the CSS Tricks series A Complete Beginner's Guide to NPM, and I enjoy blogging about dev, design and tech (both freelance and here on this site). Occasionally, I get asked to talk about what I write on podcasts.

In my spare time, I often enjoy hobby coding; I’m the maker and designer of the word games Quina (iOS/Android/web) and Hondo (iOS/Android/web). Although those are my only “finished” and launched apps (so far), I also tend to have a bunch of demos and prototypes going at once.

I wrote and maintain an open-source SvelteKit static blog starter (when I have the time, at least—repo/demo), and I still do occasional freelance development and design.

Hobbies & personal life

I lived in Omaha for most of my career, but I’ve been in Kansas City since 2022. I've been married since 2012, a dad since 2019, and a dad of two since 2025 (though I was notorious for dad jokes since long before either). My life increasingly revolves around children’s school and sporting events, which I do enjoy, but my wife and I still try to carve out time for our own projects and hobbies when we can.

Personally, I enjoy cooking, daily puzzle games (particularly Inkwell and Clues by Sam), and games in general, being a lifelong Nintendo fan and avid board game enjoyer.

I’m also a font hoarder, a reader, a dog lover, a musician (guitar/bass/piano), a certified beverage goblin (in particular, I enjoy cold brew coffee during the week, and an IPA or a well-crafted cocktail on the weekend), a maybe-weirdly big fan of Costco, and—online, at least—a semi-notorious React critic. (I'm also a regular in the ShopTalk Show Discord, so if you listen to that podcast, you also might have heard me referred to as “Josh ‘Triple Threat’ Collinsworth,” which is an honor I'm not sure I completely deserve, but I'll take it.)

Finally, I care deeply about accessibility, equity, social justice, and leaving this place in a little better shape for our kids.

More

Talks and appearances

Conference presentations, trainings, and podcasts

Writing

Articles written for other publications