About Amber Kat

I’m a self taught web designer who continued my education in design, programming, and fine arts at both Portland Community College and Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. I became interested in web design after I met a friend who traveled full time, living in Spain and Argentina while programming on the side to support his travels. I visited him, his partner, and roommates for 2 weeks in Argentina one summer and decided I could do the same. I had been interested in websites and graphic design since High School, *getting a Graphic Design Certification at a trade school in 1998, and decided to teach myself whatever I needed to know to get design jobs and work remotely so I too could travel.

After a year of small web jobs and schooling I became a full time web developer for a popular outdoor recreation store with a large online presence – US Outdoor Store, based in Portland, Oregon. I worked there for a year before making my plans to return to Argentina where I lived for 11 months, working on websites while photographing the city in my spare time, and also taking some online classes with my college as much as possible.

I returned to Portland and continued my studies at PSU and a year later I was ready to travel again. In 2009 me and my partner bought an RV and traveled the US for 9 years while we worked remotely. We finally settled in Spokane, Washington for a couple years while I reconnected with some family and in 2021 we fulfilled our goal of buying a house in Durango, Colorado. We had stayed in Durango 2 winters during our travels, and passed through with our RV during the less touristy months.

Most of my clients come from referrals from jobs I took while I was in Argentina or people I worked with in person in Portland. I have worked primarily with retail stores – clothing, fashion designers, medical and physical therapy practitioners, people in the film or music industry, authors and bloggers, and am experienced in most formats that are used for websites today, including WordPress, Shopify (and other ecommerce), Squarespace and many more.

I would love to work with local artists, writers, bloggers, small businesses, and whoever feels like they could use some help with their existing websites!