Design Director
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Sean Ross
Online Creative Director and Design Strategist
Portfolio Site: Summary
Diverse design management professional with over 14 years experience developing large-scale content driven websites, brands and teams.
Creative, solutions oriented, fast and efficient. Effective as hands-on designer and with directing and inspiring others.
Proven leader with the innovative talent to support achieving goals.
Experience
>>
Sole Proprietor, dsrstudio
Diverse client base consisting of large corporate web clients to small startups.
>> Senior Design Director, Beyond Music
As a Design/Art Director for the Beyond cloud-based music service, I help lead a small design team responsible for the visual design and UX of the product on multiple platforms; iOS, desktop, and Android. In the 6 months I have been with the company I have:
Initiated and led design workshops focusing on business models and heuristic analysis of competing products in the cloud music space which were distilled into briefs & made available to the company for educational purposes.
Led several iterations on the product design for all platforms, working with multiple engineering and product teams to ensure timely releases of exceptional quality.
Led branding workshops which involved exploring and iterating on new brand concepts.
>> Creative Director, Caring.com
As the Creative Director for the leading eldercare website Caring.com, I am responsible for the user experience of the website from wireframe concepting to the final presentation layer.
>> Principal Designer, Consumer Customer Innovation Group, Yahoo!
Creative lead for innovation team at Yahoo! working on design concepts, prototypes, strategy and process to connect advertisers with audiences in brave new ways.
>> Art Director, Yahoo! Personals
Conceived of, presented, and executed ad campaigns, microsites, landing pages, emails, and GUI architecture for flagship Yahoo business unit.
>> Sole Proprietor, dsrstudio 2005-2006>
Diverse client base including Adobe, eBay, Walmart, Visa, Flash Brigade, Mixt Productions, and more.
>>
Creative Director, Meevee 2004-2005>
Worked as Creative Director on a web-based personalized television listings service with a team of product developers, engineers, and I/A specialists. Wrote product requirements, created rapid prototypes for user testing, along with competitive assessments and positioning models. Created look and feel, brand guidelines, and styleguides. Conceived the tagline Find Something To Watch, which was trademarked and used.
>> Design Director, TechTV
Managed a team of technical and visual designers and provide mentoring across multiple projects. Review in-coming proposals, project schedules, and budgets. Implemented global strategies for styleguides, intranet, applications, games, and automated image scripting. Collaborated with ad sales/internal promotions departments to create successful and unique web campaigns for clients such as Microsoft, Dice, Circuit City, and others. Wrote creative briefs, design specifications, and stylegudes. Provide strategic direction, vision, and scope on web-based projects, guiding definition of sites. Act as lead UI designer and provide functional requirements specification to engineering. Key stakeholder in the Branding and Marketing groups governing the TechTV brand positioning cross-medium.
Won the Standard of Excellence award by the Web Marketing Association (WMA) in 2002 (techtv.com)
Won AWRT Kudo Award for Best Media Website 2003 (techtv.com)
Led (Creative Directed) techtv.com s website redesign to increase TV shows branding prominence, support time spent viewing goals, address long range advertising needs, and improve information retrieval for users.
Continued increase in unique web visitors up to 2 million users a month.
Drove competitive ad sales by offering bundled design services and securing deals with high profile ad clients.
Designed automated image scripting process which allowed increase of overall production output and saved the company an estimated $80k annually.
Designed look & feel and specifications of new templates which became G4.com post merger.
>> Web Designer, ZDTV/TechTV
Collaborated with a team of artists and engineers to create truly convergent design solutions for both on-air and on-line. Designed web interfaces for TechTV s wide range of television shows and home pages. Other design projects include interfaces for interactive television, quicktime TV channel for broadband, story illustrations and interactive pieces for daily content, chatroom designs, contests, and promotions.
Managed complete rebranding of the network from ZDTV to TechTV.
Key contributor to numerous design initiatives to increase web traffic and branding awareness, including several design iterations of the home page.
Art directed ZDTV s channel for Apple s Quicktime player, working with a team of developers and producers to provide an innovative solution to video on demand.
Appeared on Call for Help with Leo Laporte as ZDTV s resident graphics expert.
Education
MFA in Interdisciplinary Design, California College of the Arts. Honors Student. 2009-2011Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Visual Arts, UC Berkeley, 2007-2010
BA, Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts, San Francisco State University. Honors Student. 1994-1998
Art Studio and Music Theory, University of New Mexico. 1990-1992
Technical Skills
Expert knowledge of Mac and PC based systems including troubleshooting and repair of complex workstation environments. Adept at finding novel solutions to technical challenges.
Extensive experience with user-centric design methodologies and processes.
Expert knowledge in visual design fundamentals for the web including typography, color, layout, motion, and branding. Fine arts background with the chops to execute the vision.
Extensive experience with distilling business goals and user requirements into highly functional and aesthetically pleasing products.
Solid foundation in programming fundamentals with working knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, Actionscript, and Standards-based technologies.
Experience in process oriented, team-based organization.
Software and Tools
Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Imageready, GoLive, InDesign, Acrobat, Distiller)
Macromedia Studio MX (Dreamweaver, Flash, Freehand)
Microsoft Office (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Project)
Omnigraffle, Painter, Swift3D, Final Cut Pro, Logic, Cubase, Native Instruments, Waves, and Universal Audio suites, Peak, Recycle, Reason, Quick Time Pro, Debabelizer
Professional Development
Thunder Lizard Adobe Photoshop Conference 1998Graphic Design Studio U.C. Berkeley Extension 2000
Advanced Macromedia Flash for Designers, SF State Continuing Ed 2001
Flash Forward Conferences 2000,2002,2004
Contact
Sean Ross
San Francisco, Ca. 94110 415-***-**** ****@*********.***
Copyright c 2012 Sean Ross All Rights Reserved
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