Resumé
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Freelance Designer / Developer / Director
Company Name: Dan Poynor Design
Dates Employed: Feb 2000 – Present (17 yrs 2 mos)
Location: Austin, Texas Area
Company Website:
As an independent design consultant I specialize in personalized service primarily focused on gathering objectives, product marketing ideas, content assets, and creative input from business stakeholders and then presenting potential solutions, devising production plans, and creating final products for use within both large organizations and small companies. Project tasks typically include development of content, navigation, visual design, strategic branding, prototyping of new functionality, and final production.
Specialities: Creative strategy, UX design, art direction, visual design, brand extension, development, website maintenance, CSS3, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, WordPress, wireframes, landing pages, banner ads, print advertising, print production, lifestyle photography, product photography, illustration, photo manipulation, package design, mockups, and prototypes.
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Creative / Webmaster
Insightly
Dates Employed: Jun 2013 – Dec 2016 (3 yrs 7 mos)
Location: Remote Contractor
Company Website: https://www.insightly.com/
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Creative / Webmaster
Adobe
Dates Employed: Jun 2011 – Jan 2013 (1 yr 8 mos)
Location: Remote Contractor
Company Website: http://www.adobe.com/
In July of 2008 I started freelancing for EchoSign and eventually became responsible for all web and print creative based on strategic marketing and branding needs. Day-to-day short-term responsibilities included working with internal management and development teams along with third-party partners and vendors to ensure EchoSign brand integrity across multiple platforms and media. Larger projects included pitching new high-level concepts based on marketing objectives, presenting visual design mockups and prototypes, articulating time and technical requirements, educating managers, developers, and other contributors on brand standards, then following-up to ensure accuracy of work and to look for potential ways to improve workflow. As projects were completed assets were archived in a system I developed for easy reference and potential re-use in future projects.
As part of the acquisition by Adobe in July 2011 I was tasked with evolving the EchoSign visual language to meet Adobe’s branding guidelines while preserving EchoSign’s overall messaging and familiarity for existing users. The redesign included the public-facing website, conference booth graphics, print ads, banner ads, landing pages, HTML emails, white papers, brochures, presentation templates, and other marketing collateral. Internal templates and branding assets were updated along with third-party systems such as Salesforce, LivePerson, and Marketo.
During the transition I led EchoSign forward with Adobe branding standards by educating managers, developers, and individual contributors on the new standards and ensuring consistency across efforts. As Adobe EchoSign became part of the Acrobat product and services family I assisted with migrating the website including content and business logic into the Adobe CQ content management system before handing off responsibility to an internal group at Adobe.
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Contract Visual Designer/Developer
IMVU
Dates Employed: Aug 2009 – Oct 2010 (1 yr 3 mos)
Location: Palo Alto, California
Company Website: http://www.imvu.com/
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Creative Director
Yahoo!
Dates Employed: Mar 2007 – Feb 2008 (1 yr)
Location: Sunnyvale, California
Company Website: https://www.yahoo.com/
Within an internal startup at Yahoo! I concepted and designed micro-sites, landing pages, and banner ads for various Yahoo! properties and strategic business partners. Primary focus was on direct response marketing Cost Per Lead (CPL) campaigns. I was dedicated to creating easy-to-use interfaces and high converting user experiences for multiple online verticals. Advertising vehicles included both standard display and rich media formats (such a Smart Ads or Gadget Ads) in addition to proposing new ad unit formats and web site interaction models for special strategic opportunities.
I was hands-on with project management and concept development while working with C-level directors and partners. Responsibilities included translating business requirements and potential new opportunities into interactive visual solutions by presenting wireframes, mockups, and prototypes towards getting buy-in and approval from stakeholders.
Utilizing market research tools such as comScore, Nielsen/NetRatings and internal applications I was able to routinely perform competitive analysis to recommend intelligent marketing and design strategies. Other tools included Omniture for managing user experience along with internal reporting tools such as Ad Center for monitoring click-though rates, plus monitoring user feedback.
Duties required establishing and facilitating communication with in-house partners, third party partners, vendors, marketing and technology directors, product managers, engineers, developers, and other visual and interaction designers to create successful interdependent scalable applications for large audiences.
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Art Director
Adteractive
Dates Employed: Jul 2005 – Feb 2006 (8 mos)
Location: San Francisco, California
My primary responsibilities at Adteractive were to drive user experience and front-end development for several ecommerce verticals based on the latest visual and interactive marketing trends while educating team members on new methods for increasing marketing effectiveness, improving usability, and lifting direct response conversion rates. Additionally I was hands-on concepting and producing more complicated projects such as overall site redesigns, defining complicated dynamic scalable templates, and visualizing new business solutions.
Day-to-day duties in this fast-paced environment consisted of identifying project needs, assessing workflow and resource needs, defining schedules, wireframing content navigation scenarios, developing high-fidelity prototypes, looking for opportunities to incorporate standard user centered design patterns, and designing newsletters, emails, banners, landing pages, micro-sites.
Tools I typically used were Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Excel and Word along with HTML, CSS, and ActionScript programming. I primarily worked with marketing managers, PHP/Java engineers, and database administrators to create dynamic strategic solutions aimed at meeting business needs for the company and it’s affiliates while converting users into satisfied customers.
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Interactive Art Director
HP
Dates Employed: Jul 2003 – Aug 2005 (2 yrs 2 mos)
Location: Palo Alto, California
Company Website: http://www.hp.com/
As Interactive Art Director I led the HP Home and Home Office (HHO) ecommerce creative strategy and execution by translating business and customer experience requirements into effective web based solutions. I helped maximize website usability and overall effectiveness by analyzing click-stream data, reviewing user feedback, researching industry wide best practices, and utilizing competitive analysis findings while meeting corporate business objectives within this large scale global ecommerce environment.
I optimized creative processes and improved overall marketplace brand presence by holding weekly production meetings with team leaders to review current and upcoming projects to look for cross-coordination opportunities – ways to standardize visual and text messaging across efforts for brand consistency, learn about new print and digital media campaign assets created by one team to potentially leverage in other teams, and synchronize release schedules when needed for maximum campaign effectiveness. Reviews also included ensuring deliverables from outside agencies met HP’s high quality corporate standards and branding guidelines while working with the demand generation group to ensure consistency of all online and offline activities.
For regularly scheduled usability studies I was hands-on creating content flow scenarios, layouts, graphics, developing interaction design, animation, and prototypes to evaluate how easily potential customers were able to perform specific tasks.
Additionally I ensured designers had the necessary hardware and software, led Graphic Designer recruitment processes, provided scheduling estimates, and championed a CSS redesign of the enterprise website towards reducing costs, improving browser performance, and increasing the overall user experience quality.
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Lead Screen Designer
AOL
Dates Employed: 1995 – 1997 (2 yrs)
Location: San Mateo, California
Company Website: https://www.aol.com/
As Lead Designer I held the creative directors vision and led the design process while working with various teams consisting of developers, video editors, animators, and graphic designers. I partnered with producers, content managers and engineers to create user-centered product designs that focused on navigation and functionality design along with incorporating visually rich aesthetics and interaction. As projects were completed I helped lead postpartum evaluations to guage successes and identify areas needing improvement.
Over time as needs evolved I developed a training program and became the point person to educate new design department hires on production processes, AOL’s brand standards, and overall company vision. Additionally I worked closely with and instructed affiliate studios and vendors on a range of subjects involving content flow and navigation schemas, page layout, graphics development, image processing, and AOL style guide principles.
Projects included online, print, CD-ROM, and broadcast television motion graphics design and production.
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Freelance Production Artist
The MacPhee Group
Dates Employed: Aug 1992 – Dec 1993 (1 yr 5 mos)
Location: Pasadena, California
Created newspaper, sell sheet, and magazine advertising, video jackets, brochures, point-of-purchase displays and other marketing assets primarily for the entertainment industry. Projects occasionally also included brainstorming tag-lines for ads and creating stylized logo treatments based on direction and feedback from Senior Designers, Art Directors, and Creative Directors.
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Contract Corporate Communications Specialist
Health Net
Dates Employed: Mar 1991 – Aug 1992 (1 yr 6 mos)
Location: Woodland Hills, California
Company Website:
Responsibilities included corporate identity standardization, workflow management, and participated in hiring of temps for print graphics production. Oversaw design and production processes of special event and sales materials. Worked closely with managers, content editors and vendors on various projects including corporate directories and design of an information services kiosk.
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Intern
Studio Dumbar
Dates Employed: 1991 (less than a year)
Location: The Hague, Netherlands
Company Website: http://www.studiodumbar.nl/
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Intern
Total Identity
Dates Employed: 1990 (less than a year)
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Company Website: http://www.totaldesign.nl/
Education
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California Institute of the Arts
Location: Valencia, California
Degree Name: BFA Field Of Study Visual Communications
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University of California, Berkeley
Location:
Degree Name: Professional Certificate Field Of Study UNIX/Linux System Administration Activities and Societies: Berkeley Extension Program courses completed in marketing, management and organization, competitive analysis, linux systems administration, and psychology.
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Seminars for Success: Google Analytics Advanced Topics & Implementation Training
Degree Name: Certificate of Completion Field Of Study Google Analytics
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Marketing Experiments Professional Certification Program
Degree Name: Professional Certification Field Of Study Landing Page Optimization Activities and Societies: Member of the Marketing Experiment Group
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Seminars for Success: Google Website Optimizer & Landing Page Conversion Testing
Degree Name: Certificate of Completion Field Of Study Google Website Optimizer