Coroflot

Resume

Experience

IZAKAYA, LLC
Washington, DC
Managing Member / Director of Design and Marketing
Jan. 2009 - Present
Together with husband Darren Norris, currently in process to open a Japanese eating establishment, KUSHI, in Mt. Vernon Triangle, Washington DC which is scheduled to open in 2010. The responsibility includes directing the restaurant brand concept including all print and online creatives. Worked closely with architect designers from The Heiserman Group to design a 4,000 sq feet floor space, and established the interior and exterior decor through various mood boards.

Caviar French Fries
Washington, DC
Principal / Freelancer
Feb. 2008 - Present
Providing contract-base art direction and user experience support to various design firms, including RTCRM, Perph!c, and Experience by Design, as well as individually consulting various clients. Project range from large-scale organizations, such as AOL, AARP, and Association for Financial Professional, to local scale small businesses, such as Hu�s Shoes, BusinessElite, and Northern Virginia Surgical Arts.

AOL, LLC
Dulles, VA
Art Director - AIM Programming
Oct. 2006 - Feb. 2008
Managed and led a team of 4 designers and art directed on numerous UI, concepts, mood boards, screen mocks, visual specs, and design requirement documentations. Worked closely with various team leads located in remote office locations outside of the Dulles office, including Dublin, Columbus, and Bangalore. Working with the Community team has gained knowledge of understanding The Long Tail, user-aggregated niche market business model, and to conceptualize the future of AOL Community. Designed one of the Community in a Box concept mocks to drive the initiative business strategy, also participated in an offsite brainstorming session to conceptualize product direction in detail with participants from various groups. Also collaborated with another art director to conceptualize and redesigned the user experience of AIM Dashboard, an online start-up page for AIM. Lead the design team to create various mood boards for the AIM brand, and art directed screen mocks to design a look and feel of the website experience.

Art Director - AOL Network
Aug. 2005 - Oct. 2006
Managed a team of 4 designers to assist and art direct project leads on various business requests for AOL portal (AOL.COM), Welcome Screen, Webmail Landing page, AOL Video, and My AOL products. Contributed as a creative lead to launch incremental improvements of AOL.COM. Also worked closely with business strategy and development teams to build new tool-driven Dynamic Lead templates, and documented a "cookbook" including all possible templates with visual specs and guidelines for the programming team.

Sr. Designer - AOL.COM
Mar. 2004 - Aug. 2005
Lead Designer for AOL.com interactive member experience redesign: concept development, interactive flash prototyping demo, and visual direction. Also responsible for creating and upholding consistent style guide standards and practices with multiple external production agencies.

Designer - Studio@AOL
Jun. 2002 - Mar. 2004
Designed Welcome screen for software version 8.0 and 9.0. Assigned to develop concept design and prototyping demo for future application software releases. Created visual mood boards and lead design to reinvent existing channel brands such as AOL Shopping 2003, RED (formerly known as AOL Teens), and AOL.com for prospect users.

Building Service Management INC.
Arlington, VA
Graphic Designer
Manage all tasks from design aspects, as well as budget and technical planning. Tasks mainly included both print and multimedia collaterals, such as promotional printed brochures and brand identity systems.

TISANI Consulting
Bethesda, MD
Designer
Assigned as principal designer for various high profile companies: US Airways, Fannie Mae, MCI WorldCom, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Earle Palmer Brown, US Chamber of Commerce. Conducted strategic consulting with clients from project initiation to project completion while utilizing skills in the areas of multimedia, motion graphics, web design, and logo development. Also met with clients frequently to establish desired direction for creating new and improved brand identities.

USWeb/CKS, MarchFIRST
Bethesda, MD
Designer
Collaborated with team of designers for Web Design and HTML production for various projects with World Bank, Web Method, US Airways, First USA, and PNC Bank. Acted as a lead designer in designing environmental displays for seminars for MarchFirst clients. Involved in creative concept development team for sales pitching to acquire new clients and sales.


Education & Training

O'Reilly Media at AOL
Dulles, VA & Bangalore, India
Training in Agile Software Development

AOL Corporate University Program
Dulles, VA
Training in CSS

Fig Leaf Training
Washington, DC
Training in Flash MX: Application Development

AOL Corporate University Program
Dulles, VA
Training in Action Script for Flash MX

Corcoran College of Art and Design
Washington, DC
Continuing Education in Adobe AfterEffects Course

Lynda.com
Ojai, CA
Training in Macromedia Flash 4.0

American University
Washington, DC
Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design Major, Studio Art Minor


Qualifications

Web Design, Interface & Application Design, User Experience Design, Art Direction, Mood Boards, Illustration, Animation, Photography, Print Production, Brand Identity, Online Publishing, Interactive Design and Scripting.


Softwares

Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, AfterEffects, Flash, Coda, Word, PowerPoint, Excel


Languages

ENGLISH
JAPANESE