Scrub jays are generalist birds

Scrub jays favor places where habitats touch: forest edge, shoreline, foothills, windbreak. They are smart, adaptable, and fearless. Scrub jays are restless homebodies, grumpy optimists, and sociable loners. They aren’t the most glamorous birds. But where bigger, fancier, more specialized birds struggle…

…scrub jays thrive.

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Scrubjay is a generalist digital workshop

We design and develop user experiences for socially-responsible organizations.

With 20+ years of experience, we’ve learned such organizations need (and can afford) nimble generalists more than lumbering specialists. We are a full-service shop, but can embed with larger teams to fill smaller roles. Our client roster includes worthy organizations like Mercy Corps, National Audubon Society, Women for Women International, Goodwill Industries, and United Way.

bike selfie

Paul Souders founded Scrubjay

Paul is the principal and sole employee of Scrubjay. He has an advanced degree in Anthropology and used to be a professional archaeologist. During the DotCom boom he drew cartoon monkeys for a kids’ website. After that Paul was an art director. He lived in China for a little while. He was the online fundraising designer/developer for Mercy Corps for six years. Paul hates referring to himself in the third person singular and first person plural but his business consultant insists on it.

Practices

  • Product design, management and ownership
  • Project management
  • User experience design
  • Visual design
  • Content strategy
  • Online fundraising optimization
  • Email design and development
  • Web application development
  • Content Management System development with Django, Drupal, and static site generators

Clientele

  • Nonprofits
  • Fundraising consultancies
  • Socially-responsible businesses
  • Interactive agencies

Habits

  • Orthogonality
  • Iteration
  • Pragmatism
  • Parsimony
  • (Re)Usability
  • Textuality
  • Readability
  • Social responsibility

Currently working with

Scrub jay portrait adapted (desaturated) from a photo by Martin Reesman, Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

All the other photos on the site are (cc-by-4.0) 2018 Paul Souders/Scrubjay Works LLC