Ellen may be the newest member of the Dogster team but she is no stranger to us. John, Greg and I all worked with Ellen at Preview Travel and Travelocity way back in the Dot Com Boom days. In fact, borrowing time on Ellen’s computer was how I managed to build my very first website which subsequently led to her hiring me at Preview Travel in the fall of ‘96.

Ellen was an integral part of growing Preview’s online business. She designed and built the UI for AOL’s first and the world’s second web-based airline ticket purchasing sites. By late 1997 Preview Travel was taking in $1 million a month in travel bookings and in fall of 1999 Preview Travel, then a public company, was acquired by Sabre’s Travelocity (although technically a merger, to all but the finance whizzes it was an acquisition).

Ellen stayed with Travelocity until the two companies were fully integrated and then started her own design firm, cake & media, and relocated to Paris and New York. In fact, before the dog days of Dogster, my web development company, One Match Fire, partnered with cake & media on a few e-commerce projects including stores for William Stuart Antiques and Coastal Goods.

Needless to say our tails were wagging when Ellen decided to move back to San Francisco and we were barking mad when she finally succumbed to our begging and pleading to accept the position of Creative Director at Dogster, Inc. Ellen’s arrival marks the first time Dogster and Catster have had a full-time graphic designer. Our members are already enjoying graphical improvements we had put off for so long, and will benefit from having a purely graphical mind leading new feature UI and the site redesign they so badly deserve. Thanks to o2 design collective and Thinkcorps for getting our design to where it is today, but hold on to your collars everyone as it’s a new dawn over here and it’s not a minute too soon.