Our Beginnings - Rooted in Education
The Design Mission was first known as "It's Really Simple Software" .  It was founded in 1993 by Andrew Story, a fulltime secondary history teacher, as a means of disseminating lesson plans and curriculum for other secondary teachers using HyperCard. Much has changed since then, and along the way Drew has been a featured speaker at the Stanford Institute for Educational Leadership Through Technology, the Computer Using Educator's Conference, Colorado's Nuts and Bolts Middle School Consortium, and the California League of Middle Schools Conference. (Our original logo to the right was a photo taken by Drew.)

The work focus for the company shifted to web development and web consulting services with the rise of the World Wide Web and growth of the Internet. In 1997, with the assistance of his wife Jennifer Thompson, a graduate of the highly regarded Women's Economic Ventures of Santa Barbara, we got serious about making this a going concern.  We became "The Design Mission".  While still teaching, we worked in off hours and soon created many websites for Ventura based businesses, a website and intranet for the Ghost Ranch Conference Center in New Mexico, a site for an award winning high school class promoting tolerance, and began our involvement with several open source projects.

After having developed and piloted Ventura County’s first web design program at Ventura High School, Drew finally left teaching to pursued a career as a web developer for a 'dot-bomb' aptly named GoProfit.com in the spring of 1999. Jennifer left teaching a year later to assist with managing The Design Mission and also created DivaTribe, a community website for women. As a company created by teachers, we continue to have strong ties to education and non-profit groups. The Design Mission still donates over 100 hours a year to community oriented organizations and donates a minimum of one percent of our gross sales to environmentally oriented groups each year.  (Check out 1% For The Planet .)

Business Development in the Post Dot-Bomb Era
In 1999, Drew became a partner at interFUEL helping to convert the company from a sole proprietorship to a limited liability corporation with the remains of the GoProfit creative team. While at interFUEL, he worked with clients that included Patagonia, Warner Bros., TV Land, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, UC Santa Barbara, and Autobacs. Drew left his work at interFUEL in the summer of 2002 accepting a long-term contract position as Project Manager for eDistrict (now CPI Solutions). While there, he managed and produced web development projects for companies such as Cleveland Golf, Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin, MGA Entertainment, Mitratech, Mosaic Capital, Sticker Planet, Strix Systems, and The Mentor Group.

Availability as Freelance Workers
In March of 2004, Drew ended his contract work with eDistrict and went to work as a web developer for Patagonia in the Ventura corporate headquarters. Working for an environmentally responsible corporation that places values above profit is a perfect fit.  Drew is now the Web IT Project Manager.

Jennifer continues to manage the bulk of the business (in September of 2006, Jennifer returned to teaching math at Oak Grove School) while Drew does the development work.  Given we are both fully employed elsewhere, The Design Mission's time is now limited to freelance work during non-business hours. While its doors remain (somewhat) open, the hours and the projects it considers are limited.   Our billing rates reflect this condition, and we are very selective about what projects we can perform, and for whom we will work. 

Since at least 2001, we have always had work, and work pending.  Consequently, we must schedule all work in advance.