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Design - Graphic

Senior Creative Experience Designer

Creative & Design

<p>I've tended to wash up on the shore of whatever flavor of the creative industry seems to be paying the bills over the years. Moving through print and packaging to branding and content strategy to UX, accessibility, and front-end development hasn't exactly left me with an algorithm-friendly throughline, but I have collected a generalists' quiver of specialized skills.</p><p>Currently, I'm most interested in the built environment, fabrication, lighting, and using my hands when I'm not deep in the weeds of SCSS and semantic markup.</p>

My full-time role at Primarily in 2016 and 2017 focused on differentiating clients through strategic research, then establishing their position across a mix of digital and analog marketing channels and physical environments.

Capabilities include:
• Joining visual design and brand narrative with content strategy and data-driven analysis. 
 - visual design
 - strategic planning
 - creative content creation and curation
 - performance and usability audits.
• Determining strategic design recommendations based upon a client's goals and limitations.
• Communicating findings with honesty, confidence and responsibility. Sharing straightforward, constructive and actionable advice.
• Presenting work to facilitate and record feedback.
• Management and instruction/mentorship of direct-hires and junior design collaborators.

In 2017, I was centrally involved in:
• Exhibition and print design campaign for SacSurfacePro, a local home services provider.
• Experiential design/environmental graphics for the flagship retail office space of All City Homes, a boutique real estate agency, in Elk Grove, California.
• Market & Content Strategy Consulting for Marosi White’s Accent Design interior design studio.
• Brand Management for NevMade custom housewares.
• Social Media Planning & Content Strategy for the Firefighters Burn Institute charity.

Since taking on a full-time position in Q2 2018, I currently take on brand consultation projects on a highly selective basis only.

Skills: Art Direction · Branding · Events · Content Strategy · Social Media · Front-End Design · Branding & Identity · Front-end Coding · Content Development · Responsive Web Design · Digital Marketing · Graphic Design · Graphics · Social Media Marketing · Creative Strategy · User Experience (UX) · Front-End Development · User Experience Design

Senior Creative Experience Designer, Principal

Lead the design, development, integration, implementation, and maintenance of public-facing internet and agency intranet websites and web applications.

Front-end Web Development
* Practice user-centric and intuitive web user interface design best practices, and a high degree of competency in front-end web development.
 - Deliver secure, reliable and scalable websites and applications
 - Ensure compliance with accessibility standards and other state policies and standards
 - Perform ongoing performance monitoring and traffic analysis.
 - Evaluate and improve the stability and security of existing web applications

User Experience Design
* Ensure usability, performance, and accessibility via modern web standards and agile development methods
 - Conduct user and usability research, utilize analytics and other metrics to develop and implement user-centric designs and intuitive web user interfaces
 - Lead developers, content creators, and database administrators towards implementing high-quality, well-tested, and maintainable full stack applications
 - Identify and address technical compatibility and integration issues

Technical and Creative Leadership
* Develop and update work plans for the execution of website-related projects
 - Identify resources, schedules, and priorities
 - Prepare and maintain technical documentation
* Research emerging technologies to develop new methods, criteria, and/or new standards, contributing to improved services
* Demonstrate excellent verbal and written communication, and technical leadership skills, working with stakeholders at all levels, creating solutions to meet business needs
 - Explain technical issues and concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences verbally and in writing
 - Pro-actively build stakeholder relationships
 - Achieve stakeholder buy-in to increase probability of success
* Lead and mentor web application development staff.

Skills: User Experience (UX) · User Experience Design (UED) · User Interface Design · Design Thinking · Cross-functional Team Leadership · Front-End Development · Web Accessibility

Lead Web Developer 

As the graphic designer for the agency's Marketing & Communications team, my main focus was creating or updating marketing collateral to agency guidelines while ensuring all materials meet ADA/WCAG compliance and statutory requirements.

Projects:
• Program design for the inaugural Western States Exchange forum.
• Accessible document and interactive form creation for the Dream For All and Accessory Dwelling Unit programs.
• Comprehensive overhaul of the agency style guide. 
 - Initiate change from bound document to digital handbook with collaboration-friendly digital asset library. 
 - Update existing content to reflect current brand standards, including for web/social media applications and to meet WCAG accessibility requirements.
 - Adjust, remediate and organize disparate font usage to use a consistent default standard. Apply these typographic decisions to a new master document to support consistency and compliance.
• Diagnose and remediate color inaccuracy that arose following industry-wide change to print management standards. Coordinate with agency staff, vendors and management to resolve problem technically, aesthetically and cooperatively. 
 - Adjust, remediate and organize disparate logo and template files to use this new standard.
• Art direct, design, illustrate and produce the 2023 and 2024 Popular Annual Financial Reports in WCAG-compliant digital and print formats.
• User Interface, style guide and best practices implementation of Power BI dashboards.

Tools:
Adobe Creative Cloud (InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, Photoshop), Microsoft Office 365, PowerBi, Siteimprove digital quality assurance, Equidox PDF remediation tool

Languages:
Standards-based HTML5, CSS3, SVG

Skillsets:
• Accessible document creation
• Long-document design and production
• Information Architecture, Prototyping, Site-Mapping, Content Inventories
• Web Accessibility (WCAG 2.1.2); best practices and remediation of web and digital documents

Skills: Art Direction · Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) · Illustrator · Digital Imaging · Front-End Design · Front-end Coding · Publications · InDesign · Illustration · Graphic Design · Graphics

Graphic Designer III

After touring skateparks in northwest Oregon the summer of 2020, I collected the photos as the jumping off point for the first issue of Songs — just as a one-off. Six issues later, Songs provided an outlet for Northern California skateboarders, photographers, and artists underserved by the lack of mass market alternatives. 

Publishing a print magazine in an oversaturated-yet-underwhelming digital media environment is a great, or at least easy, outlet for the type of work I know and love: experimentation with layouts, illustration, and a return to occasionally writing again, as well as new avenues in my creative practice, not least of which being photography.

Skills: Art Direction · Branding · Social Media · Creative Direction · Graphic Design · Graphics · Small Press Publishing · Publications Production

Publisher

User experience and front-end development roles within the university’s web services project team.
• Front-end development of production-ready, semantic, responsive HTML5 and CSS3/SCSS.
• Apply UI/UX best practices to enhance public and internal processes, systems and standards.
• Perform usage data analysis to improve site taxonomy and information architecture.
• Follow iterative processes to create userflows, mock-ups, site maps, and coded deliverables.
• Lead usability and accessibility efforts following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1).
• Measure and remediate issues for Quality Assurance and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Develop user documentation and style guides, and advise and train campus web publishers.
• Web Services representative to the Accessible Technology Inititative Steering committee.

* Occasional visual design including animated SVG infographics, digital signage, and one-sheets.

Skills: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) · Branding · User Experience Design (UED) · HTML · Front-End Design · Front-end Coding · Responsive Web Design · Graphic Design · Graphics · User Experience (UX) · Front-End Development · User Experience Design · Wireframing

User Experience Designer

I teach (or have taught) User Interface Design (GWDA 202), Editorial Illustration (GDWA 342), Digital Illustration (GWDA 103), Image Manipulation (FND 135) and Fundamentals of Web Design (GWDA 133) in the Graphic & Web Design program.

Adjunct Professor

Award-winning communications design for both print and web media; concept, production and project management. I’ve done some of my best work in the following areas:  
• Publication design (editorial and advertising)  
• Event promotion & on-site collateral design  
• Logo development & identity  
• Website design & strategy  
• Packaging design  
• Exhibit & large-format design (indoor/outdoor) 
• Poster design & illustration 
• Specialty graphics (diecuts, apparel, toys, etc.)

Independent Creative Professional

In 2013 and '14 I worked with Burton's in-house apparel designers to create a series of interactive moodboards for internal use by their international sales team.

Web Developer (contract)

•	Lead the visual development and creation of all identity and promotional efforts for event, education and membership programs. Campaigns often crossed over between printed collateral, display signage, outdoor media, POP, packaging and on-screen multimedia. Project audiences ranged from landscape contractors and their suppliers (B2B) to consumer education/outreach (B2C).
•	Designed and produced all specialty branded online content consistent with existing campaign identities, from single-page brochureware to multiple-tier image showcases and branded (HTML) emails. 
•	Creative directed California Landscaping magazine, a bimonthly, full-color trade publication targeted at landscape contractors. Duties included:
—	Art direction of editorial content and cover design.
—	Creation and management of core template and stylesheet systems.
—	Developing promotions and special sections.
—	Interfacing with an outside advertising sales team, freelance photographers and writers.
—	Color correc

Communications Design Professional

I worked for the label from their first release in 2003 through a switch in ownership almost 10 years later. Weird Forest built its reputation on straying outside the lines of traditional music and a commitment to quality packaging. My work for the label was featured in HOW and idN magazines and the Pasadena Museum Of California Art.

Art Director

Aaron Winters is a Senior Creative Experience Designer at Primarily Design in Sacramento, CA.

Aaron Winters

Aaron Winters

Skills

Interests

Industries

Summary