William (Bill) Tomlinson

I have toiled, lo these many years and had hoped to come out with a reward in the end. Well... my reward is not so much monetary as it is having made lots of friends during my career.

From a beginning at Jensen Printing Company, we made camera separations, and hand stripped all the color elements in a printed piece. I went through the complete evolution of the pre-press business which started with the Macintosh and the Desktop system replacing all that cumbersome prepress activity that was so time consuming and expensive...

The worst part -- I lost my biggest clients as they could see the advantages of staffing their own departments with desk-top operators. With it went the brokerage of several million dollars worth of printing as it no longer made sense to the clients to purchase the printing through me.

The good news was that in 1990 I developed my own Mac Department, hiring Jean Mueller as an Art Director, and we became a full service resource for the smaller advertiser for whom it made no sense to hire their own staff. Together, we created a lot of promotions for the likes of TitleWave Music and Video Stores and TurnStyle Consignment Shops, and several other retailers.

Through it all I have kept learning new things and broadening my base of expertise, including the management of a sizable Website project for the Walter Annenberg Family (think Reader's Digest Fortune). They donated a lot of money (half a $billion) in the late 90's in an attempt to improve education in America. While most of the funds went as matching grants into the large cities, 10% (some $50 million) was set aside for Rural America. What better way to share the success stories of individual grants than on the Web? I pulled together a team of knowledgeable people who were capable of training students at the Minnesota New Country School which started out in store fronts in LeSueur MN. It was the second Charter School in the state of Minnesota, and became famous when it's students discovered deformed frogs. What happened was truly a success story for the students involved, the Annenberg interests, and the school. Three students with technical interest in the internet were charged with buying a server and setting it up to serve the Web pages to the users at their various locations across the country. I trained a couple of students as editors and writers, and we went on road trips to the annual conventions where we set up training stations for participants to teach them how to come into the site and share their grant success stories from around the country.

From that beginning, I have learned a lot about the Web and marketing on it. I will confess it is hard to keep up with the jargon and concepts with the advent of Social Media Marketing. But I try to keep up!

I have not forgotten how to compose a nice looking ad page, with interesting typography, and proper kerning and spacing.

So give me a shot at anything you have that needs to be created, revised, or reincarnated.

Thanks,

Bill Tomlinson