Derek Gembus
Software & Data Engineer | Full-Stack & Automation Expert
Danimal Clown is a children's entertainer in Northeast Ohio — balloon artistry and clown performance for birthdays, schools, churches, and corporate events. I built his original site as a custom WordPress theme, and years later he came back to have it rebuilt from scratch.
The design problem here is specific: the person booking isn't the person being entertained. Kids want chaos; the parent holding the credit card wants to know this is a professional who shows up on time and is good with a room full of six-year-olds. So the brief I set for the rebuild was colorful without feeling messy, fun without feeling cheap. Playful illustration and floating balloon details carry the fun; clean structure, clear pricing, and real event photos carry the trust.
The rebuild is Next.js and TypeScript with Tailwind, statically exported and component-based so pages stay consistent and future changes are cheap. The booking form is the center of the site — wired with reCAPTCHA and rate limiting so his inbox stays usable — and I added lightweight in-page editing so he can update his services and copy himself, keeping the one thing WordPress was genuinely giving him. Sitemap, robots, and analytics are configured. Pages: home, about, services, gallery with lightbox, and contact.
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Au Jus is a Chicago-style Italian beef counter in Parma, Ohio. Italian beef came out of Depression-era Chicago in the 1930s, so I built the site around that period rather than a modern restaurant template — Art Deco framing, high-contrast serif display type, gold rules on deep maroon, and letterspaced small caps for the labels. The look isn't decoration; it's the sandwich's origin story, which is also the client's whole pitch.
Hand-coded from scratch — no framework, no page builder, no template. Just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which for a restaurant is the right call: it loads fast on a phone in a parking lot, nothing breaks when a dependency updates, and hosting costs almost nothing. Food photography runs full-bleed behind the frames, with the address, call-ahead policy, and hours surfaced in the hero so nobody has to hunt for them.
Beyond the homepage: full menu, a separate catering menu, photo and video galleries, contact, and a custom 404. I handled the local SEO as well — structured data, sitemap, robots, and Search Console — because a neighborhood restaurant lives or dies on showing up when someone searches "Italian beef near me." I also designed the 1920×1080 menu boards running on the TVs in the shop.
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Spotlight Cleveland is a newly restored corner bar and live music venue on Cleveland's west side. The site had to do two jobs at once: convince someone scrolling on their phone that this is a place worth going to, and answer the practical question of what's on this week.
I designed and built it custom rather than from a template, because the venue's identity is the room — dim, warm, loud. The whole visual language comes from that. Stage-light beams wash across the hero image. An equalizer motif marks the live indicator. Waveform dividers separate sections. A marquee ticker runs along the bottom carrying the weekly lineup — comedy open mic Tuesdays, jam night Wednesdays, bluegrass and jazz on rotating Thursdays — so the schedule is visible before anyone clicks anything.
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I'm excited to share a project where I managed the full product lifecycle: "BlockGuard: Call Blocker," a native Android app now live on the Google Play Store.
As the lead developer, I architected the complete solution and utilized AI tools for accelerated code generation in Kotlin & Jetpack Compose. My core focus was performing rigorous debugging, refactoring, and quality assurance to transform the initial code into a secure, polished, and market-ready product.
This project, launched successfully on June 1st, highlights my ability to independently take an idea from concept to a complete, published application.
View the Project:
Official Website: https://blockguard.app/#home
Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.radstormtech.blockguard
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