A brief history of Robin Deutschendorf

and the Brown Wing Studio

Robin was born and raised outside of Tucson, AZ - with parents who loved a rural lifestyle, but a father who (somewhat paradoxically) worked on the cutting edge of archaeological technology. Robin knew how swap out the graphics card in a home PC before the general public knew home PCs existed. At the tender age of 11, she saved up her allowance to buy the family's very first mouse. She found it genuinely disconcerting when DOS went out of vogue.

But computers were never her only interest. Robin spent a lot of her childhood on horseback, exploring the empty deserts around her home. When it came time for college, she moved away for school and declared majors in both English and the Fine Arts.

Partway through college, Robin moved to Wales to spend a year abroad. In a world before blogs, she decided to create her own website to keep her friends and family abreast of her happenings. She bought her own domain name and started to learn HTML and CSS. She immediately decided, and has continued to believe since, that websites are a whole lot of fun.

A few months after returning to the US, she built a website for a friend. Then she built one for another friend. Eventually, she got a job at her university's art museum. The museum's website had been half dismantled at some point in the past and never put back together. Robin said, "I'll rebuild it." And she did. Another department on campus noticed the new site and hired her to construct something similar for them. After that, word of mouth sent a steadily-increasing number of website jobs her way.

Simultaneously, Robin was taking classes on design and composition, as well as working on creating printed material for the museum's events. By the time she graduated and moved to Iowa, she knew how to use Photoshop and InDesign along with her first love and old standby, Dreamweaver. She could also write a cascading style sheet by hand.

Starting over in Iowa City and disconnected from her network, Robin wasn't sure if the web-work would continue. But one client started the ball rolling again, and two years later, Robin officially went pro and founded the Brown Wing Studio to meet the increasing demand. She has since worked on all kinds of print and online projects, from customizing blogs, to formatting books for the press, to helping others launch their own small-businesses. She loves variety and is always up for a challenge, so get in touch if you have a project or an idea.

Why did she call it the Brown Wing Studio? Well, her name is Robin, afterall.

Robin still lives happily in Iowa City. When she's not working on a project, she's usually hanging out with either her husband or her horse.