This by Them began as a collaboration between two successful freelancers who realized the whole was greater than the sum of its parts, or, at least, wanted to create some kickbutt websites and designs. Though the principals, Scott Matthew Nelson and Lance Alton Troxel, each have their little section of the West Coast, California and Oregon respectively, the foundation of the company is strongly centered on quality, creativity, and originality. Of course it also doesn't hurt to have a great time, a little fun, a hearty bemusement, even a grand milk-out-the-nostrils chortle while creating work we take rather seriously. And yes, we're a small firm. But with that comes a great flexibility; not like we're web ninjas, necessarily, but pretty darn close.

One of THEM: Lance Alton Troxel

Lance has worn a few hats before entering web world. A self-taught designer, he came to it rather by accident while pursuing degrees in literature and creative writing. Then one thing led to another, and that thing lead over to those things, and many, many photoshop filters later, he's found great joy in pushing pixels around the screen for hours and hours on end. When not having is face lit by an Apple-ish glow, he can be found finding the odd LP in a thriftstore record bin, collecting way too many irregular, hand-cast ceramic bowls, making a rock-and-roll video with his good bud, or making a short film. Lance's films have shown in a few festivals, including this one, and can be seen here, with other moving image odds and ends.

One of THEM: Scott Matthew Nelson

Scott picked up the web bug early, in his teens, and right out of high school co-founded a web design company. It had an office and desks and a coffee maker; the whole shebang. While the brick and mortar shop lost steam, his passion (yes, passion) for learning and mastering code raved on. This included diving headlong into the world of Flash, and not long after connecting Flash to his other favorite pursuit, the Drupal CMS. From this code-mance came the Drupal Services Module, a plugin of sorts that allows Drupal to talk to Flash and vice versa. Boy, was it a big hit, with thousands of installs. When Scott isn't playing Macbook alchemist, he might be cookin’ up something spicy, jamming the bass, adding a new idea to his long list of "new ideas", or traveling very very far away from home.

One of THEM: Blake Lucchesi

Blake started out with web design while in high school, loved it, but decided to pursue a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, at Irvine. While in school he relied on his internet savvy and enjoyment of the web to bring home some bread. Blake got his start in Drupal when the community accepted his project proposal for the Google Summer of Code program. And so began his work a Fuzzy Search Engine Module. Following his summer long romance with Drupal he was able to further his knowledge and experience from an overwhelming amount of Drupal contract work. Over the following two years he participated in Google Summer of Code once more, helped relaunch www.sag.org, and built a social media experience for REM. Now, Blake enjoys his continued pursuit of binary zen and teaching that knowledge to others.