Graphic Design
Portfolio
Portfolio
I'm a Self-employed,
Digital Creator & Graphic Designer
Digital Creator & Graphic Designer
Moving forward, I’m excited to build a strong foundation in self-employment alongside a partner who shares my entrepreneurial spirit. This time, our approach to earnings will align—we’ll be investing in our futures together. I look forward to sharing my passion project with her and am confident she’ll be equally enthusiastic to share hers with me. Revised: 4 November 2024.
During the two years following the start of the U.S. pandemic (2020–2022), Phantom Records, LLC, owned by Michael T. Widener, launched the DJ-experience® app. Founded in 1989, Phantom Records has a long legacy of music innovation, and this project marked a pivotal shift from physical products to a fully digital music service. DJ-experience® continues Phantom Records' tradition of pioneering service in the music industry, exemplifying the company's evolution in the digital age. Revised: 4 November 2024.
From 2016 to 2020, I entered into a romantic relationship that seemed full of potential. However, my commitment to self-employment and my focus on long-term investment clashed with her (my partner's) desire for immediate financial gain. While I believed in building something romantically strong, in addition to something financially strong, over time (instead of quickly), my partner prioritized short-term income gains and immediate romantic immesion and but I didn't have time for that. This difference in our financial and romantic goals created tension that ultimately unraveled our relationship. That was five years ago. I am happy and have recovered from the tension. I am wiser and better for it. Revised: 26 October 2024.
Post-graduation, I took my Phantom Records' website to new heights, transforming it into a cutting-edge multimedia platform (on its backend which is not visible to everyone). With the site in maintenance mode, I shifted gears to contract work for the TSA, a local church, and a startup, expanding my skill set so that I stayed ahead of web trends. I am still ahead them today, in October of 2024, and have fully integrated the use of A.I. (artificial intelligence) ino my design and web development practices. The addition of A.I. has moved my productivity into the stratosphere. I am now incredibly productive and I make no apologies for my lack of humility in my professional ability. I am very modest about my personal life. I am humble about that. However, I am very confident in my professional ability and I only work in conditions that allow me thrive and move at the pace I can move. Tension only arises when there is an attempt to slow down my productivity for any reason. Revised: 26 October 2024.
After the Great Recession I graduated from American University and entered an Internship Program that placed me in government contracting. I learned about banking regulations and the role regulators play in keeping banking honest. I also received a vital surgical procedure that solved a multi-decade medical problem that had dogged my concentration for almost twenty years, which made it difficult to get straigt-As in school, although I got them anyway. Revised: 12 November 2024.
During the Great Recession, I returned to school at American University, creating a unique degree that fused Graphic Design, Multimedia, and Web Programming. Balancing part-time work and study, I graduated with a 3.49 GPA, walking with the honors students across the stage to receive my hard copy of my hard-fought, expensive University Degree. It was a tough time, but I came out stronger and ready for the professional world. And now, with A.I. my ability is multiplied in ways no one, not even in my own family who supported me to achive this no matter the financial cost, can imagine. I am the best version of myself now, the happiest version, and I am completely independent and self-sufficient, even in my personal, daily domestic life. I am the locamotive barreling down the track of achievement. Revised: 26 October 2024.
Before the Great Recession took hold, I decided work would be too difficult to find if I still had no college degree. I decided to enroll at American University, and to create a degree that would not be five years outdated the day I graduated. The month of graduation, my Academic Advisor said to me that I had actually achieved that in making the unique degree the University approved. She said it is not every day that a student arrives at a University of the caliber of American, and simply leads it. She told me to go and learn to be proud of myself because the records at the University will always show what I did. She said educators know how to read these records and see the perseverence in me and when and if I ever doubted myself, to just think back to my alma mater and to those words and believe it that it is and will always be real for me. That is why I am proud of myself. I helped an incredible institution get even better! Revised: 26 October 2024.
In New Zealand, I co-founded an innovative video game retailer that hit 1.2 million visits in its first year and garnered media buzz. It was a video game retailer that drop-shipped video games to customers so it had a website presence, and also a physical presence. It was brand new to the Internet in that my site also had streaming videos of the video game play that you see now on YouTube and many online platforms around the world. But back then, in 1996, when I starged building it, during one-full year of research with my target audience, no one was doing this on the Internet. I searched and looked everyone for it and there is even a Newspaper article that quoted me as lamenting that I wanted to find a website to emulate instead of making it from scratch. I couldn't find anything so I had to invent it. i did that and that is why my Gamescape On the Web website, gamescape.co.nz, that I launched in 1997, was added to Amazon.com's patent document. I was the first to feature gameplay videos, made big waves in the gaming world, had fun doing it and almost got married and never was going to return to the United States if I had my way. As fate would have it, I returned and then did the same thing all over again, until 27 years later, I innovated again, using a website, by making my streaming DJ website, that is my latest innovation, at https://dj-experience.app/. I have come along way in that many years, and so has the Internet. I'm glad I returned to the United States because I would be woefully outdated if I had not returned in 1998. Revised: 26 October 2024.
After interning for George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch, and learning about special effects I discovered I love animation and could go to a school to learn it. I applied and was accepted to Cogswell Polytechnic and went a few semesters before I got too lonely because I was older than all the other students. I left and returned home to find a better solution. School doesn't work when you feel out of place and are the age of all the teachers, insted of the students. I later went to a larger school where there were adult students and didn't have the same problem so I stayed and graduated.
At Domino Computer I worked a minimum wage job that I loved so much the owner had to tell the police to come by the store when I was working late because I didn't want to go home after work. He gave me a key and I worked far over my hours and couldn't care less about overitme. He just made me the store's after-hours keeper so the police would come and meet me and not think I was robbing the place! I learned so much about sales, work-ethich, and people and computers that I knew I'd always be amazing fixing those things! Still am thirty years later!
At Skywalker Ranch I was introduced to many things, including how creative people work. (Mostly quietly, that's how!) I met Robert Redford, put my technical support skills to good use, organized stuff and did super-fun data-entry because the staff let me choose how to do it and I entered about a wall's worth of magazines into a database in a four-hour marathon data entry session! LoL! They laughed and thought I was so funny because I smiled and just said I knew I could do it but I had to have someone help. They made me stop and take a break and then they let me ask for something after my internship was over. My other intern who was helping got a super cool gift too! There, I learned how an employer is supposed to treat a worker. It helped shape when to stay or when to leave a job. Nothing can touch what I learned there. I will alwyas be grateful for what they gave me! (I have a credit for my work in their published book!)
(Balancing work and school, I joined a computer store as both a salesperson and technician, building systems while learning customer service. I became Novell Netware certified, earning $60 an hour for network house calls. My boss liked to say the computers I built were "bulletproof."
My first foray into the world of design began at Image Graphics Co. in Oakland. Armed with early tools like Super Paint on a tiny black-and-white screen, I honed my skills and managed office tasks like mail merges. This hands-on experience laid the groundwork for my career in graphic design and tech.
Attending the prestigious CPS in Oakland was more than just school—it was a training ground for intellectual rigor, problem-solving, and creativity. Every class was taught at the honors level, pushing students to excel. I graduated with a 3.5 GPA, which, in the eyes of universities, translates to a 4.5, thanks to CPS’s advanced curriculum. CPS shaped my work ethic, commitment to excellence, and passion for teamwork—skills I carry with me today.
During my time in Berkeley, I completed Junior High School amidst significant personal challenges. Unbeknownst to me, I became a father, and the birth of my daughter was hidden from me by those close to her. While I’ve processed the emotional impact of this experience, I have chosen to keep those who were involved at a distance. Their actions revealed a lack of ethical judgment, and though I no longer dwell on the past, I maintain healthy boundaries to protect myself from emotional harm. Revised: 27 October 2024.
During his impressionable years, Michael attended an institute for gifted children where he excelled academically, achieving straight As in 27 courses. His time there culminated in a stage performance in San Francisco, where he and his twin brother, Stephen, headlined a violin recital. Their photographs are still preserved in San Francisco's public library archives. Revised: 27 October 2024.
During his early school years, Michael attended a well-known, famous preschool taught and led by a neighborhood parent that everyone knew. The teacher, Mrs. Shelton, owned several properties in the neighborhood and two of them were preschools run out of converted homes and she had all of the neighborhood kids over for celebrations, birthdays, and always said for them to stop by on warm or hot days. She and her family made watermelon and healthy fruit in their lovely backyard so the kids could come by to eat those instead of junk food, like popsicles. Michael had a crush on one of her daughters and used to go over to eat fruit to see if she was home. He was a straight-A student because he knew the way to impress her was to impress her mom. He was always a "smart-cookie." Revised: 27 October 2024.
Large Poster Design
Stamp Design
Digital Ad Design
Game Design
DVD Menu & Video Editing
Production Bumper Design
Website Design & Maintenance
Website Design & Maintenance
Website Design
Website Design & Maintenance
Web Application
Compact Disc Packaging Design
"Wild Wild West" DJ Mix
"My Love Is Your Love" DJ Mix
"Faithfully" DJ Mix
Logo Design
Website, Cards, & Voicemail Audio
This text left here for die-hard animation fans. (Otherwise, it's too much information.) Michael created an interactive "mini game" animation to represent the "Peace Process" in an interesting way. He bought a dance pad with a USB cable connection. The dance pad is three feet by three feet wide. He then designed a "cover" for the pad. His "cover" was also three feet by three, designed in Adobe Photoshop and created at full print quality: 300DPI. That is an extremely large file and it was very time consuming to work with but Michael believes in quality and flexibility so he did it anyway. He had the "cover" printed at FedEx Office on to vinyl paper. The then "stuck" the "cover" on top of the dance pad so that his "pictures" precisely covered the dance pad's contact points. In other words, a dancer stepping on his "pictures" would activate the "hotspots" beneath the "cover" and send a signal into the "mini game" he created. The "mini game" was made in Adobe Flash, and he used a small Mac OS X utlitity to interpret the dance pad's "buttons" to send keyboard keystrokes depending on which one was "stepped on" or "pressed." The keystrokes were then mapped, within Flash, to activate certain animation sequences. During his design process, it was told to Michael that moving within Flash from one "Scene" to another the way Michael wanted was impossible. Michael searched Google for three days and found the same claim. So what did he do? He guessed. Based on the "syntax" of ActionScript, Michael created an original code sequence and it worked.
"Kinetic Type" is a type of animation with moving text. Movies that have opening sequences with elaborate movements, such as the Spiderman movies, where the camera moves around the web hopping from one text phrase to another, are using "Kinetic Type" or "moving text." Michael used Adobe After Effects to create this animation. But with this one, he also used his DJ-skill to "time" the animation to the audio in the attached sound file. An author read their famous passage from "Lenore," and Michael animated the entire portion. This is only a portion, as the project was split between Michael and others. This is Michael's portion: Kinetic Type Animation.
After creating hollywood quality animations for this project, Michael received feedback that he only had to make very simply, slow-moving animations because the senior customers viewing the animations were likely only interested in that, instead of something too fancy. Michael created these to accomodate the Client's request. These are very easy to make and fun to make in various colors or to make various alternatives such as ones that play normally and ones that play on holidays with different, festive animations. See one of them here. NOTE: The animation is very slow! You have to wait for it!
