Some people say I'm split-brained: not only can I design graceful, innovative and stylish websites, marketing collateral, branding documents and corporate identities, but I can also understand the business logic motivating my clients. As a result, my designs are useful and unique, the perfect blend of form and function. I emphasize your company's tone, manner and brand identity because I believe in the power of a simple symbol to powerfully impact potential customers, inducing them at a glance to buy into your product's rationale. If you haven't yet developed a brand identity, no worries -- I have an innate ability for capturing abstract thoughts and translating them into a tangible vision. I can pull inspiration from a wide variety of sources to complement and raise the level of discourse of any assignment, which makes corporate branding a particular specialty of mine. I can work independently or as part of your team, whichever is most effective for creating your design, website, media kit or marketing collateral. I have excellent listening skills and am adept at hearing what isn't being said ... it's all about my relationship to my clients and finding the right alignment with their goals.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Staff Positions

Circle.com [www.circle.com]
Associate Creative Director, Brand (2000 – 2001 / San Francisco)
My duties at Circle were twofold: I was charged with creating a brand process and helping to organize the design group's service offerings, and I designed and art directed client work. As ACD of Brand, it was my responsibility to outline the process of new brand development and extend corporate branding onto the Internet. I developed brand strategies based on a clear understanding of the complex business and web issues that accompany the creation of large-scale sites functioning in dynamic publishing environments. My regular duties including participating as brand consultant in the development of new business, translating client needs and concerns into appropriate design context, developing brand process flow and documentation, writing up brand aspects of creative briefs, extending brand attributes through the design of web templates and user interface, and mentoring design staff with concise, objective and considerate feedback. Some of my more notable accomplishments included:

• Under the direction of Roger Black, a leader in the publication design business, I built a new brand system for the re-launched San Francisco Examiner. Our goal was to reposition a 100-year-old newspaper in a new era with a new owner. We evolved the existing iconography, which extended to newspaper boxes, promotional placards, delivery trucks, and building banners, into a new paper with a preserved sense of history.
• I re-branded and repositioned Atomica Corporation (formerly Gurunet), allowing the client to redefine their business plan to accommodate a rapidly expanding and morphing marketplace. For me, the exciting challenge was retaining the essential elements of the existing company, incorporating them into a new and different brand and style manual that was poised for growth in any a number of directions.
• One Digital Drive was a web application designed to migrate a real estate agent's traditionally paper-based processes to an online environment, including a contact database, a system for tracking leads and a step-by-step guide for leading a client though the sales process. In addition to developing the overall conceptual framework, which resulted in a very unique a creative solution for the interaction design, site architecture and visual design, I created an online developer's guide used by site builders for the product rollout and in future product updates.
  

Rucker Design Group [www.rucker.com]
Senior Designer (1997 – 2000, San Mateo)
Here I embraced web and interface design, creating brand-identity systems for high-tech and web startup companies. Initially, my strong typography skills and print background complemented the strong web skills of the staff; however I was soon able to develop competitive web design skills, including deep knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark Xpress, which I honed over a three-year period. Some of my most interesting projects included:

• I created a corporate collateral suite for Ariba that included website design, trade-show displays and marketing collateral. Our approach in creating the look and feel of Ariba's collateral was to position the company as a legitimate player at home in the company of Fortune 500 organizations, a leader in the then-emerging B-to-B e-commerce marketplace. The look was serious, powerful and modular, expressing a technologically advanced product in a direct and concise manner, driving Ariba to stand apart from a world of specious "webby" products.
• I designed the Xenote brand identity and business suite, which mirrored the essential action a user takes in making a bookmark—the clicking or tagging of specific information for use later—which this company was extending beyond the computer desktop and into the broader world. My designs captured the basic concepts of the Xenote's identity, a platform upon which the company would build its future growth and technological advancement.
  

Ligature, Inc.
Senior Designer (1993 – 1995, Chicago)
I believe every designer in Chicago spent some time inside the world that was Ligature, a high-energy, high-volume educational design firm. I managed a staff of designers producing large numbers of pages in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment utilizing large quantities of custom photography and illustration. I managed, designed and directed large-scale educational programs, which included collaborating with designers, editors, production staff and curriculum specialists to develop highly effective visual and verbal materials for K–12 programs. This required that I conceptually understand instructional methods, design planning and information design strategies required to execute effective learning materials, and helped me develop strong production skills, including electronic page composition, color separation, pre-press and web press supervision. For a number of programs, I also oversaw the art direction of photo-shoots, photo-styling, pre-press file preparation and web-press supervision. While I was able to work on a number of interesting projects, some of my more notable work was the following:

• Houghton-Mifflin Mathematics put into practice a groundbreaking theory of teaching math with a fun, visual, real-world approach. This was the first textbook program to be produced entirely on desktop publishing system, the concept being that the creativity latent in each member of a development team could be harnessed to significantly inform educators about the way math is taught. As a member of this team, I was called upon to conceptualize and execute the lessons with only a central theme and a general framework of the math content, such as percentages, averages and division, using my own ideas to create effective curriculum
• I helped develop the grade-12 application of McDougal Littell: The Language of Literature, and was responsible for creating lessons and activities relevant to the "analysis" and "writing" sections of the book, tasked with using visual design methods to make students view these subjects as simple and relevant. I was also the lead art director for the opening sections of four high school textbooks that set the tone and introduced the relevant themes to be covered through the school year, using games and brain teasers to illuminate such themes as looking at life through a different perspective and using literature as the vehicle for understanding life issues.
  

N.A.M.E. Gallery
Communications Director, Board of Directors (1992 – 1995, Chicago)
N.A.M.E. Gallery was a nonprofit art space that promoted the work of young and emerging artists in and around Chicago. I became active in the local arts community and eventually found myself with a seat on the board of directors. My role was to oversee and develop all the gallery’s printed communications, creating a unified identity and developing a program of quarterly calendars, which served as the gallery’s voice to members, the press and granting institutions. One of my more notable accomplishments was arranging for pro-bono printing and paper by using connections in the printing industry, which enabled us to significantly reduce costs and enhance the quality of our printed materials.

Perolio, Inc
Designer (1990 – 1992, Chicago)
As the movement toward electronic print production exploded, I took this job for the opportunity to design as wide a variety of projects as possible. We worked on corporate identity packages and standards guides, capabilities brochures, street banners and advertising, among other projects. I learned the fine art of buying illustration and photography, and experimented with various printing techniques and papers. I was responsible for the concurrent design, management and production of print projects of varying scope, directing and supervising photographers, illustrators, vendors, typesetters and offset printers. In addition to the pro-bono work I performed for local not-for-profit fundraising efforts, I also created comprehensive promotional materials for a large real estate development project.

Lipman Hearne, Inc. [/www.lipmanhearne.com]
Designer (1989 – 1990, Chicago)
Although finding work during the recession of the late 1980s was somewhat of a challenge, Lipman Hearne turned out to be a great place to begin my design career. I became part of a very experienced and talented staff of designers and editors, from whom I learned traditional typesetting, four-color printing and design studio processes. A diverse clientele, including nonprofit fundraising and philanthropic institutions, satisfied my youthful urge to be a part of something good in this world.

Freelance Clients

1185 Design [www.1185design.com]
Senior Designer (1996, Palo Alto)
Produced corporate collateral, corporate ID and website design for Silicon Valley-based technology companies such as Sun Microsystems, Cisco and Ariba.

Addison Wesley Publishing Company [www.aw.com]
Designer (1997, Menlo Park)
Designed user interface for CD-ROM titles, created an online users guide for teachers to use with their textbooks, and prototyped new six-book elementary math program.

SKILLS

Graphic Design: print design, web design, typography, art direction of photographers and illustrators, client presentations, pre-press and press supervision
Software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXpress, ImageReady, Adobe PageMaker, Aldus Freehand, Suitcase for Font Exchange, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Flash, HTML, MS Word, MS Excel, Word Perfect, FileMaker Pro
Platforms: Mac & PC friendly. Familiar with AOL, Netscape and Internet Explorer browser and platform limitations
Hardware: Flatbed and handheld scanners, and digital cameras
File graphic types: EPS, TIFF, GIF, JPEG
General: Highly creative, detail oriented, creative problem solver, capable writer, and determined self starter. Able to work independently, but also a great team player.

EDUCATION

Carnegie Mellon University, BFA in Graphic Design (1988)

DESIGN SAMPLES

Online Portfolio
For a comprehensive view of my designs, including marketing collateral, web design and corporate identity branding, please visit http://home.earthlink.net/~jimochs.

Live Sites
World View

Print portfolio and references shown upon request