Living the evolution of the internet

My name is Federico Capoano and I was born in 1987 in Rome, Italy. I have lived in Ibiza (Spain) for about three years and now I'm living again in Rome.

I started to become excited by web design when I was just 13, when I was literally still a child and web sites had a much different look than nowadays.

I remember when web sites contained a lot of animated GIFs, abused of repeated silly image backgrounds, played even sillier background music in midi format and they couldn't be viewed with anything different than Internet Explorer.

I've lived the evolution of the internet and web development technologies, from the first browser war between Internet Explorer and Netscape, passing through the advent of Macromedia Flash (now Adobe), to the new era of Web Standards, the raise of the Open Source community, HTML5 and the Open Web Platform.

I can say "I was there and it has been a lot of fun since then".

At that time web design was still just a passion: I used to build web sites for fun like online gaming crews or for school projects.

When I completed my High School studies I was unsatisfied with the level of the university web design courses in Italy, because they taught concepts that were already out of date. So I decided to go the hard way: start freelancing at just 18 years old.

I started to collaborate with small companies and other freelancers and by being in strict contact with them I learnt in no time not only the advanced technical aspects but also the business workflow of this job.

I love my job and I keep it on with passion: designing and building a web site doesn't just mean work for me, it's a creative act that requires costant research and improvement, encouraging an intense brain training.

My Skills

I've been playing and hacking web-sites for more than 10 years now and I developed a respectful skillset:

  • Programming

    • html / xhtml
    • css
    • javascript
    • php
    • python
    • actionscript
    • xml
    • SQL (MySQL dialect)

  • Design editing

    • Adobe Photoshop
    • Adobe Flash
    • Adobe Fireworks
    • Adobe Illustrator

  • Other skills / knowledge

    • Communication Design
    • Information Architecture
    • Accessibility & Usability
    • Search Engine Optimization
    • Social Media Strategy
    • Linux based server administration
    • Blogging
    • Photography

  • Languages

    • Italian (mother tongue)
    • English
    • Spanish

  • Supported Open Source Projects

    Joomla Wordpress Django Symfony JQuery Mootools

My Personality

I am kind and passionate about my work. I tend to be a perfectionist while I try to keep my feet firmly on the ground. This is why I love Django, "the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines".

I spend a considerable amount of time doing "active listening" with my clients in order to comprehend their needs and goals. I try to guide them and give suggestions in order to build effective and cutting-edge web-sites that will meet their goals.

I like to look for balance in everything I do, constantly experimenting carefully new techniques.

In designing a web-site I seek for harmony, balance, personality and meaning.
While developing a web-site I work on stability, usability, accessibility and performance.
When I organize the information of a web-site I try to keep it simple, easy to read according to the latest eye-tracking studies applied to web writing.

Since a potentially effective web-site that no one sees is useless, I think that Search Engine Optimization is an activity to be taken in consideration since the beginning of every project.

I believe in Open Source software and I try to contribute to it as much as I can: by writing code, publishing articles and tutorials, offering support on online forums and helping to build a wireless community network.

My Open Source contributions

Web Design blogs featuring my work