BRKILY info
I have been doing freelance and contract work as a creative director and graphic designer for the last twelve years. Before that I worked as a creative director/art manager for Phenomenex & an art director at The Broadway Department Store.
I have worked w/ mom&pops, start-ups, multi-national corporations, plumbers and visionary mad men doing everything from identity development and training materials to web-sites, trade show booths, newsletters and social marketing. I also do paid & pro bono graphic work for several community organizations, including the phenomenal Whittier Conservancy.
I spent several years at UALR (the U of Arkansas, Little Rock) reading Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Anaïs Nin, Rimbaud, Tom Robbins, especially the Lost Generation writers—American writers living in Paris in the twenties. I was an unorthodox student, taking studio art, engineering, library science & philosophy classes, among others. Then began a life of travel, beginning with a Lake Village odyssey, courtesy of an early mentor—the under-appreciated incredibly talented painter, Stephanie Starnes—through Natchez Miss where I fell in with Cassandra Wilson, out to California down to Dallas, 6 yrs in NYC and 20 in SoCal. I am recently situated in rural Arkansas, working remotely for a few long-standing clients & learning fascinating new skills in specialty and variable data printing at the amazing Consolidated Printing, Inc.
I earned a ++first class, on-the-job graphic design education in NYC working for several passionate graduates of The Basel School of Design, who were bootstrapping brand-new design firms destined for greatness: Dean Alexander & André Schuetz, Jim Faris & Lauralee Alben, & Valerie Pettis! I learned to be intrepid about staying well informed and out in front of industry knowledge and concerns.
I have experience providing a broad range of services and collateral for advertising and marketing: naming, branding, corporate identities, information and experience design, presentations, brochures, catalogues, etc. I especially enjoy resolving the most fundamental requirement of an effective, beautifully designed solution—the insightful and accurate framing of the problem. My skills are excellent and up to date on Adobe Creative Suite and I can smoothly manage multiple projects, delivering timely results. I am a positive and easy-going collaborator, always looking to pitch-in where needed.
A few highlights of my work:
-- I stepped into the shoes of a beloved art director at The Broadway and was producing, within a week, 20+ pages of beautifully shot & designed newspaper advertising per month.
-- At Phenomenex, I built a fantastic team by having a great eye for potential employees with minimal experience that had the talent & self-motivation to advance quickly. This was good budget-wise for the company and enabled the training and development of a cohesive and gung-ho team.
-- I contributed to the esprit de corps & moxie of Phenomenex by transforming a massive amount of direct mail and product literature from clip art into sexy, modern, compelling materials that the scientists, sales staff and customers loved.
-- I facilitated excellent relationships among Phenomenex’s many marketing stakeholders. This success contributed greatly to the company’s average 20% growth every year for the six years I was there.