About

Saturated Media Works

My name is Brad Zeffren, and Saturated Media Works is the name I use to represent my interactive development work. Most of the time this means developing web apps and websites, but sometimes it also includes other things like UX design and audio/visual media content creation. I'm currently based in Nashville, TN.

Blog

Resume

2021 1994

Staff Engineer

RMS

SF Bay Area, CA

2018 - Present

Risk Management Solutions is the world's premier provider of catastrophic risk modeling. The company is almost 30 years old, and began by only providing statistical models. These last few years have seen the company shift to SaaS based services. As a Staff Engineer focused on the front-end, most of my time is spent getting new features into customers hands as a member and technical lead of a product team. I've also been a core contributor to the cross-team design system and UI component library.

Sr. Engineer / UX

Emma/CM Group

Nashville, TN

2014 - 2018

Emma was one of the first SaaS companies in Nashville's young tech community as an early provider of email marketing tools. My roles there were varied over my five year tenure, starting out as a UX designer and ultimately ending up as a Senior Engineer focusing on front-end development. It was one of those special, 'right place at the right time' companies, and I learned a ton while working there. It was eventually acquired by Campaign Monitor and continues to thrive as part of CM Group.

Engineer / UX

Civilization

Seattle, WA

2012 - 2014

Civilization is a boutique creative agency focusing on graphic design and interactive development. My work there was varied, though it mostly centered on UX prototyping and CMS backed web development (Wordpress, Shopify, Drupal, etc..). As a multi-disciplinary agency, I was also involved in video editing, set design, and site installation.

Producer / Engineer / Artist

Music Production

Boston/Seattle/Nashville

1994 - Present

I started working in recording studios when I was 19, and spent the next 20-ish years in and out of them. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 1999, I left Boston and moved west to Seattle where I worked in, owned, and freelanced in various studios as a Producer/Engineer. Of course, I had a band, and played in bands, and lived the music life. It's still something I work on every time I get the chance.

Contact

I'm always looking for new projects, so please feel free to reach out.

hello@saturatedmediaworks.com

Done is better than perfect

So I can be a bit of a perfectionist.. or at least an over-analyst. It's taken me the better part of four decades to realize that this personality trait is not always constructive. When starting any kind of creative project, the tendency for me has been to charge in with a full head of steam and inspiration.

In the beginning, things generally go pretty great. Then, about halfway through, the super-zoom lens of the perfectionist kicks in, and that's when things start bogging down in details I never knew I cared about. Often times, I end up with another partially finished idea. But whether it's a web project, an article, a music track, etc. doesn't matter. If it's not finished, then it's just not finished. It really doesn't matter what media it is, or how good it is.

As a project, this website you're on now has been on my list of things to do for a long, long time. I wanted a vehicle to try out some dev and design ideas, post an online CV, publish some articles about things I've learned over the years, try some experiments with front-end web tech, and more. When I got started, I scrawled this phrase -- "Done is better than perfect" -– onto a piece of tape and stuck it on my monitor. Honestly, it worked.

I've tried other little motivational phrases, but this one actually did the trick. Whenever I would find myself peering over the precipice of a brand new rabbit hole, I'd look up and see it.. "Done is better than perfect". And most of the time I successfully forced myself to pass over the rabbit hole and keep going.

So I will get around to writing those next few pieces I have planned out (posts about front-end techniques, or observations on professional tech culture, or even how I put this site together...), I will also do some experimental graphics work and document it, and probably some other things that may or may not be interesting. But that's later. For now: "Done is better than perfect"