Eric

Van Holtz

Making AI safe for humanity. In 2020, key members of OpenAI left to form Anthropic, a public benefit corporation with a laser focus on AI safety. Anthropic believes that AI has the potential to radically change society, and that ethical standards are required to minimize the dangers and maximize the benefits.

A weekly-ish playlist curated by the employees @ BASIC/DEPT®

With Hyphen, repetitive tasks are put on autopilot, allowing restaurant staff to focus on the human elements of hospitality and culinary creativity. Developed by veterans of Instacart, Sweetgreen, SpaceX, and Apple, Hyphen is an automated makeline designed to increase efficiency and food safety in modern kitchens. Shortly after the launch of the website, Hyphen raised a $24 million Series A, and saw an additional $18 million follow-on investment by Chipotle’s Cultivate Next venture fund.

Mike Kelley was one of the most influential and fearless artists of our time. Kelley’s work, spanning across a broad range of genres and style, was irreverent and subversive, yet deeply insightful. His projects challenged the American class structure, reinterpreted pop culture and sparked youthful rebellion.

Studio Mega is a brand design agency based in Portland, Oregon. With simplicity, flexibility, and maintainability in mind we built a website uniquely mega. Powered by a Craft CMS back-end the website is easy to manage and update. There are several customizable content blocks that can be added and rearranged to make case studies be presented in a meaningful way.

With five regional offices, 45 years in service, and almost 100 staff members, Oregon Community Foundation is the state’s largest public foundation. OCF’s website is more than just a source of information. It’s the the first impression of potential donors, a portal for young scholarship seekers, an entry point for overworked nonprofit staff to find grant opportunities. We completely rethought the website experience to make visitor pathways efficient, delightful, and fast. And of course, we made the site easy to update and flexible, so that as communications evolves, so can the website.

onX Maps is leading the trail in private and public land mapping data. The web and mobile apps can be used for hunting, hiking, fishing, backcountry, land boundaries, watersports, camping, and more. The website presents an equal balance between supportive imagery, video, features, and information. Video backgrounds, carousels, and informative overlays were developed to display the many uses of the onX app.

We built a website that could showcase their inspired product design, bikes, videos, and more with all of the speed and attitude of their brand and riders. ICON is a Portland Oregon based company and industry leader in protective motorcycle gear. With seasonal product releases, epic video productions, and limiter stories there are no dead ends to the amount of content on the site. The ICON websites are the hub of product information for their customers, brick & mortar and online retailers. ICON Motosports was comprised of two additional brands ICON 1000 and Raiden (no longer available). Each is geared towards a specific theme – street, modern, and adventure. All three brands needed to be able to live on their own while still being Icon. We developed three websites under one code base that are all functionally the same, but each being styled independently from one another.

Haydenshapes is pioneering new technologies in the surf industry. Hayden changed the game when he introduced futureflex, a manufacturing technology which uses carbon fiber to strengthen the edges of the board. He wanted a web app just as unique that allowed his customers to craft their boards to be the perfect shape, size, density, and design. The UI overlays a 3^d environment where you can rotate and zoom in on the board you’re creating. See changes to the board in real-time, even see how the light shines off the surface of the board based on the type of polish selected. The web app takes all of the information you’ve entered and creates a dynamic product ready for purchase. You can do all of this from a computer, tablet, or mobile device.

Parliament is a design agency located in PDX. They target specific industries they’ve defined as: Things with Wheels, Hook & Bullet, The Great Outdoors, and Surf. They can really do it all. Parliament has a beautiful collection of photography assets and the website does a really nice job showcasing that content, especially in their Journal posts. Pre-designed and developed content modules give the website a ton of flexibility. They all have available layout, theme, and style options too. There are behind the scenes features like custom landing pages that are used to target potential clients. Also, an entire job applicant management system where you can rate each candidate, write notes, and have easy access to their information.

Late nights developing websites wouldn’t be the same without my home office. Modalero, a Pacific Northwest company, custom built the standing desk featuring oak and semi-transparent black epoxy with embedded led lighting. The wood wall paneling with shelving and led lighting was custom built and installed by my father as a gift. I’ve treated myself to some premium hardware after successful years as a freelance developer.