Ellen Maxwell's Portfolio Pro

Design, produce and manage books from final manuscript through printed product for family genealogies, how-to genealogy books, scholarly genealogical materials, and journals.
- Designed new look to family genealogies
- Recent book design highlights include: A British Country House Alphabet, Family Treasures, winner of 2020 New England Society of New York Book Award, The Stories They Tell ... from the Herdeg Collection and Fruits of the Tree of Life.

Effectively guided product development in the design and production of all new print and digital products.
• Designed the 4th Edition of Adventures in Japanese, providing the series with a colorful design and easily accessible content for high school Japanese classrooms.
• Managed redesign of annual catalog and changed process to an XML to InDesign workflow which significantly improved both speed and look of catalog.
• Established and organized archives for production and marketing, improving accessibility and quality of digital archives.

Managed program of new graded readers and provided design/art reviews and approvals. Developed type specs and design guidelines and designed prototypes.
• Efficiently managed a large volume of books; proactively resolved major issues and bottlenecks.
• Recommended type specifications for 21 different reading levels after performing a detailed type analysis.
• Effectively designed prototype and product pages.

Managed the design and production department to develop a wide variety of products. Oversaw design for all materials and developed design prototypes.
• Successfully led the creation of Sundance’s proprietary product line, ensuring the quality production and design of 1,750+ new titles for the education market.
• Expanded department from 1 to 10 staff members and achieved low turnover rates; assembled a balanced and cohesive creative team capable of fully developing brand new products from inception.
• Maintained the highest levels of consistency, accuracy, file quality, and server/archive organization across all production lines.
• Met competing deadlines of multiple projects through effective prioritization.
• Significantly improved quality and efficiency by instituting production procedures and best practices for all steps of the process; established standards for templates, styling, pouring text, preflighting, pdf development, and file archiving.