ABOUT

I graduated with a degree in Graphic Design from the Art Institute of California – San Diego. I received high accolades for my projects and professional conduct.

I was asked by the school administration to serve as a part-time tutor for the Adobe Creative Suite software. The spectrum of programs included: Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, InDesign, and InDesign Interactive. I enjoyed finding creative methods to communicate and instruct a peer on a level they understood and could feel confident about performing on the software.

This experience played out later in my professional career when I trained freelance and junior designers in the process of ad agency procedures. I also worked a freelance energy drink job and completed two internships while enrolled full-time.

During my final year of the bachelor’s program, I was asked by the Dean to represent my department on a panel discussion regarding Cal Grants in our school system. The panel consisted of two California State Senators and a handful of congressmen.

This experience has helped prepare me for client-pitch meetings and how to conduct myself under pressure and still sell my concept. I also learned about presenting as a team member and serving a role during a proposal, as well as respecting my partners in the room.

I built my skill-set quickly after college when my agency gained the entire Mossy Automotive Group with eight independent dealerships and sixteen storefronts with individual needs. My role was lead designer, producing work and hiring freelance designers for aid.

A memorable project was rebranding a medical group with a challenge of bilingual advertisements.

An added process to the challenge of producing Hispanic print and radio advertising was finding an interpreter and making sure the ‘creative message’ and the tone of the ad are not lost in translation.

I had a period working as a freelance contract designer for Fortune 500 companies. I had assignments ranging from high-end restaurant menus, sales decks, and production work on branded collateral for the Del Mar Fair and Races.

I have entered into the realm of product development. Being the creative lead, my role was not only to brand but also to aid a team of engineers from concept to product. I was given the opportunity to apply my skill set into a new aspect of graphic design, creating schematic illustrations, interface design in software, and complex online buying systems.

Working for smaller companies gave me greater access to gain exposure from all aspects of agency roles and the full spectrum of creative responsibilities, not only producing work for clients but also executing strategic roll-out marketing campaigns and managing the growth of our brands.

I have had the pleasure of being a freelance Graphic Designer for SPY Optics. Working with SPY has placed me in an environment with many talented creatives. For them, I have performed production duties as retouching product and athlete photography to large format print and interscroller web banners.

At Road Runner Sports, I was brought on board to enhance their email marketing. I exceeded expectations by incorporating on-trend animations, good design, and cutting production time in half. My designs influenced multiple channels of marketing, i.e., print, social, and web. I also successfully coded multiple landing pages within a preexisting site with on-trend interactive features and prioritized the user experience within our in-house developers’ capabilities. I excel in time management and having an amenable attitude.

I was introduced to a young entrepreneur in dire straits to launch his website to complete an important sale. His contract designer had cracked under pressure and committed job abandonment, becoming unreachable.

After hearing about the Caisson brand and Dan’s passion for giving back, I stepped in and was able to create a live, simple, static website in eight hours. We continued our partnership to roll out a more sophisticated and well-designed website. We also completed a series of trade shows and marketing collateral while working together.

In 12 months and on a $25,000 budget, we delivered table tents, point-of-sale talkers, social media and product photography, branded clothing, and other small branded merchandise i.e. coasters, bottle openers.

This passion to help guide a brand’s introduction onto the market has evolved my freelancing to expand onto more veteran start-up clients, as well as the Surfrider Foundation.

While living in Los Angeles near the creative district, I picked up an internship in a modern-contemporary art gallery. My role was to assist the manager and encompassed everything from blogging about feature artist and events to wall prep and spackling. I learned how to pack a large-format, delicate canvas for international purchase as well as the laws in the procedure. I had fun circulating and promoting sales during exhibition nights. Being submerged in the culture of fine art I was constantly inspired. I wanted to model my design ascetic towards a fine art quality and style.

I interned for a large-scale mural company that was transforming their product into the modern age. A hand painted mural was upwards of $50,000, and with ebbs in the economy, clients were not interested in the finical and time investment.

The owner’s idea was to create inexpensive vinyl wall decals that could be interchanged with seasons and events. The new technology also included multimedia installations like acrylic wall mounts. The privilege of working there was learning about large-format and multimedia printing.

I got to visit San Diego’s premiere large-format printing facility and interview their staff about the pre-press process and designer to printer relationship. I learned a lot about communication, the importance of file preparation and project-time management when relying on an outside vendor.

Another priceless lesson I received there that played out in later companies on a professional level was how to react upon third party product failure from a remote location and how to recover your finances and maintain your client relationship. The adhesive provided by an outside vendor had been delivered defective and was not sticking on site. The CEO was brave and collected and managed to fix the disaster within the deadline.

I thrive off of challenges and deadlines.

This “freak disaster” was foreshadowing for events in my professional career. I felt better prepared and responded effectively when the internet and power failed in an agency an hour before our print deadline for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

We had a printer miss a deadline, I composedly chose to pull the job early and hand complete packaging for our product launch. When our engineer was unavailable to recite assembly instructions for a user manual, I was collected and resourceful, Google Image searching the parts and YouTubing how they fit together.

I feel I have had amazing opportunities in the foundation of my career to be able to provide strong leadership and design skills to my team today.