Who, me?

I'm Betsy Ellison, a designer and artist based in Chicago IL. I'm interested in how narrative frameworks shape our encounters with technology and the self. Put more simply: I draw, I design, I code, and ultimately, I hope to tell a good story.

I've built design systems, Figma plugins, interactive prototypes, and complex accessibility annotation systems. I've also worked in galleries, warehouses, research labs and digital archives. You can read all about it in my CV, or contact me to chat anytime: me@beszi.world .

Download CV

About this site

I've worked in galleries, warehouses, and labs: that's because I pursue projects that keep me curious.

This website is, like many designer’s websites, a perpetual experiment. I’m building it from scratch, writing it line-by-line in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and hosting it on Github Pages with a custom domain name. I built a few components in React, too-- before I learned I can’t integrate them on a page already structured in HTML. Whoops!

That's the pleasure and the pain of the learning process. I’m trained in the arts, so aesthetic critical inquiry is my bread and butter. I’m a big believer that a craftsperson shouldn’t use shortcuts when it comes to their practice unless they thoroughly understand what those shortcuts do, and how. I’ve harnessed internet platforms to host my artwork since I was a child, and eventually took up UI/UX design because of that attention to form. I really care about websites: I believe in rigorous consideration of websites as a context with real social and political impact. Why follow a standard just because it’s the standard? What does it mean to present myself via someone else’s product?

So when I explored no-code portfolio builders like Webflow or Framer, I struggled with the reduced measure of control. Even though abstraction was reduced, I wasn’t satisfied. What was I missing by relying on a third party vendor? What if the GUI of no-code editors and template builders obfuscates something new and different a website could do?

That’s a lot of questions and no answers all in a row. I’m trying to answer these questions for myself by getting down to brass tacks and learning to code from the bottom up. I’m still new to this, and as I practice, I’m learning code organization, syntax, and accessibility; I’m becoming accustomed to the many new languages, frameworks, infrastructure and data structures that govern digital life. With each update, I'm learning something new about design, development, and the internet itself. You might encounter a few inconsistencies: that will change. Stay tuned as beszi.world evolves.