Phase One: Doris Gets Her Oats 
In 2004 I graduated from
Thar she blowsRochester Institute of Technology with a Bachelor's Degree in New Media Design and Imaging (which
Shocking, I knowno longer exists). This means that I spent my college years exploring graphic design,
An ancient example
(Hint: click the NEXT arrow to begin the quiz...my eye for interface design has improved since then)programming,
This is a dark web/digital art example.
Hooray for nightmares!web site design and coding,
Not necessarily my strong suitcomputer graphics, photography,
I thought I was soooo cool.video editing and post-production,
Frame animation in Photoshopanimation, and
More ancient historygame design;
essentially this major was something of a toe-dipper (ask me about Macromedia Director 8), but I actually really enjoyed getting a broad-strokes education in emerging media.
For good measure, I threw in a couple of minors in Creative Writing and Literary and Cultural Studies, so that I can now truly appreciate the stellar writing and cultural significance of the quality TV shows I waste all of my free time binge-watching.
Phase Two: Set Phasers to Stun 
My first real job out of college was doing Graphic Design work for a great Trade Show company in Upstate New York. I designed all sorts of things, from
This is one of our booths from the Exhibitor show. I will design fish-themed graphics all day.large-format graphics for
An xpressions fabric display for OSRAM/SYLVANIA.fabric and
Another display for OSRAM/SYLVANIA for the NACS show. I designed the big ol' graphics.prints to outdoor signage and
I set up the vinyl for this insane jet cross-section our shop built.vehicle wraps to
A mailer for the company that could be sent out with interchangeable insert cardsmailing collateral and
A "March Mountain Madness" brochure for Hunter Mountain Resortbrochures. I got to work on a few
An informational web site for "March Mountain Madness" with html and flash componentsweb design and flash presentations for clients, edited a
42° N videofew videos for a ski resort, helped cut and apply some vinyl, designed the
Lumicore and frosted plexiglass section markers with standoffssignage for a new
Custom-designed digitally-printed sintra clocklibrary, and almost made a few costly mistakes with a
Cutawl.
After two and a half years of working with them in
Sneaking in one more shot of the library; custom vinyl wallpaper from an old scanned mapHalfmoon, NY, I got it in my head that I needed to spend some time in
New York City. I spent the better part of a year making my way down to Brooklyn via Connecticut, all the while doing freelance
A law firm blog I designedweb and
Some brochures for a fraternityprint design work, as well as some
Interactive Flash Header and Wordpress site for a kids' hip-hop album (illustrations not by me)Flash Projects and working a couple of
Stockboy and Sandwich Artist, if you must know.part-time jobs.
After some time
Another lawyer site design.freelancing in Brooklyn, I got hired in 2008 as a designer at a boutiquey
design firm that specialized in financial clients. While I was there, I worked on a lot of collateral design for business to business stuff, a
Save those points!financial rewards catalog, and some
Viewpointe B2B Introductory Mailermailers and
American Express Business Travel Forecast was a big project I worked on with our Vice President.reports. I also got to do some interactive
An American Express Air Canada campaign with ads, mailers, and digital materialsbanner ads and
An interactive ad for our companye-cards. One of my favorite parts of that job was getting to help hire and work closely with interns which I enjoyed quite a bit. In 2008, the financial markets had some, er,
Sorta like thisdifficulties. This eventually led to me being let go. I think all said and done I was there for a bit under a year.
Phase Three: Profit 
At this time I felt comfortable that I had amassed enough experience with web and multimedia through the years that I could hopefully get a job that was more directly related to that aspect of the business. In 2009 I applied for an on-site freelance position at a media company in NYC. Little did I know that I would wind up working there for five years (eventually becoming a full-time employee) and working with and learning from loads of wonderful, talented people who would become my close friends.
When I started off, I was doing a lot of email blasts and a few big Flash projects, but having been on the fringes of the industry for a while I had some catching up to do. I crammed to learn ActionScript 3 for a few early projects and created some interesting video and product-based Flash apps that ran off of xml. I learned about divs and proper css as opposed to slicing an image map into a table. (I said I had some catching up to do.) IE6 became the bane of my existence.
As a designer, I was already super comfortable in Photoshop, but now my duties were mainly development-related. As the company cut down on Flash staff, I transitioned more into updates, marketing sites, adding listings and tweaking sites, and building sweepstakes. After that came Facebook Apps, redoing entire marketing sites, setting up custom
I was lead developer on this Wordpress site for an LA Kings/Alberta Canada cross promotion while at Sanborn Media Factory.Wordpress-driven sites, creating PHP endpoints, aggregating social data, working with a few interns again, busting out some
I was lead developer on this LA Galaxy Social Hub while at Sanborn Media Factory.responsive development and some great-
I was lead developer on both the desktop and device versions of this site while at Sanborn Media Factory.looking,
I did the front-end dev for the web app while at Sanborn Media Factory.acting, and
I did the front-end dev for the mobile site portion of this program while at Sanborn Media Factory.feeling mobile-web apps. Leveraging a Flash and motion graphics background, I have become somewhat obsessed with incorporating animation and interaction via jQuery and css3.
So! Last fall I decided to make another big move and come out to the West Coast. I'm continuing to do freelance for the LA contingent of the aforementioned company along with a few other clients and trying to get a feel for the area and my next steps on this insane journey called "being a human person."
Daft Experiments 
Every once in a while I try to keep myself active by creating weird little web projects. It keeps my bizarre imagination active and helps me have fun and not feel like a grown-up (or "Grup" if you're a trekkie…trekker?). I'll add to this as time goes on but here are some classic examples.
