Dana Gravelle | Gravelle Creative

Designer • Developer • Creative Technologist

About

Dana Gravelle is a multidisciplinary designer and Drupal developer whose career bridges art, technology, and user-centered design. Based in Reno, Nevada, Dana brings more than 15 years of experience crafting digital experiences that balance creativity with technical precision.

With a foundation in graphic design and communications, Dana began his career in print and branding before moving naturally into web design and front-end development. Over time, his creative curiosity and systems-driven mindset led him to Drupal, where he found the perfect platform to merge aesthetics, logic, and structure.

Today, Dana is known for designing and building scalable, accessible Drupal solutions for both public agencies and private organizations. His work integrates thoughtful UX/UI principles with deep technical implementation — from custom module development and USWDS theming to CKEditor 5 integration and front-end performance optimization

Technical Focus

Core Expertise: Drupal 8–11, Layout Builder, Views, Paragraphs, CKEditor 5
Frontend Stack: Twig, SCSS/SASS, HTML5, JavaScript, USWDS, accessibility best practices
Backend & DevOps: PHP, MySQL, Docker, Webpack, Git, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines
Design & UX: Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma, typography, interface design, and visual hierarchy

Creative Evolution

Dana’s creative roots run deep in the world of graphic production and visual communication. Early in his career, he worked with some of Portland, Oregon’s top agencies — including Razorfish and Liquid Agency — contributing to high-profile digital and print campaigns for brands like Microsoft, Adidas, and Levi’s

In those fast-moving production environments, Dana became known for his ability to bridge design and operations — developing efficient, reliable systems for publishing, catalog creation, and advertising workflows. His strength lay not only in visual execution but also in engineering the processes behind creative delivery, ensuring precision, speed, and consistency across teams.

As the publishing world evolved toward digital platforms, Dana’s fascination with the technical side of production sparked a natural transition to web development. He began applying the same structural thinking to HTML, CSS, and early CMS frameworks — creating websites that combined strong visual identity with clean, functional code.

That evolution made Drupal a natural next step. The platform’s flexibility, modularity, and content architecture allowed Dana to merge his creative intuition with deep technical problem-solving. Today, he continues to build modern, maintainable Drupal solutions that embody both a designer’s eye and an engineer’s discipline.

Design Philosophy

Dana believes that technology should feel effortless. He approaches every project as both a designer and a developer, ensuring that each interface looks beautiful, performs efficiently, and empowers users to engage intuitively.

This creative-technical duality has made him a trusted collaborator for teams seeking both artistry and precision — someone who can translate complex requirements into elegant, usable solutions.

Beyond the Screen

When he’s not immersed in code or design systems, Dana can often be found behind a camera lens — capturing natural textures, architecture, and everyday details that inspire his visual work. Photography fuels the same curiosity and attention to composition that define his approach to digital design: observing patterns, finding balance, and creating something meaningful from structure.