Mark Kusek

Creative direction for online wine merchant: www.lot18.com and www.tastingroom.com.
Management of creative department including: visual and user interface designers, copywriters and front end developers. Strategic daily collaborations with corporate execs, sales and marketing, product development and engineering departments to maintain and publish our online ecommerce destinations as well as extend the reach of the business through subscription and continuity program marketing.

Creative direction for this online Credit Report, ID Theft Protection and Membership Benefits marketing firm. Management of department including: visual, user interface and user experience designers, copywriters and front-end developers. Daily collaborations with business development, brand stewards, sales & marketing and IT departments on a wide variety of credit, identity protection, finance and member loyalty programs like: FreeScore.com, IdentityHawk.com and DebtPlan.com.

Creative direction & information architecture for Berklee College of Music in Boston to redesign their award-winning online school and develop user interface & visual design solutions for a social network to serve this vibrant community of music makers: BerkleeMusic.com

Creative direction for NBC's 2008 Beijing Olympics web portal: "http://www.nbcolympics.com" NBCOlympics.com. NBC's digital strategy established a new technological, creative & cultural benchmark for global, digital-media, event production.

Creative direction and brand management for America Online’s award winning media portal destinations: AOLvideo.com and AOLRadio.com. Work involved concept development, information architecture, UI, visual design and the execution of strategic vision. Interfacing with a cross-disciplinary team to grow the business, incorporate new features, functionality and extend the content offering.

Strategic and tactical design direction for AOL's popular web services: Netscape.com, the Netscape Internet Service, the Netscape Browser, AOL Instant Messenger, AIM Today, AIM.com, the CompuServe Internet Service & WalMart Connect.

Design direction and brand management for Netscape Communications, a Silicon Valley legend. Work involved development of design strategy for corporate identity, brand consultation and art direction for Netscape client software as well as integration of related client and web based applications like Netscape Radio, WebMail and Calendar into Netscape.com. Provided creative direction and design management for Netscape.com, including daily programming, publishing design and creative direction for Netscape's out bound marketing efforts: online, print and broadcast. Personnel management and mentoring for department of twenty six visual and user interface designers.

Design direction and creative management for the nation's number one internet service. Work involving many successful high profile design initiatives, supervising a department of nineteen designers in San Mateo, as well as completing bi-coastal design projects with the AOL design department in Dulles, Va. Projects included the award winning service redesign for AOL 4.0. Design Lead for the West Coast AOL eCommerce team, consulting with many Fortune 500 partners to successfully assess, optimize and integrate their websites within the AOL proprietary service.

Creative direction and design consulting for the digital frontier. Clients included: America OnLine, Reebok, Marvel Comics, A&M Records, WebTV, Nortel, Ovation, Roland, Takamine, Kaman Corporation, Liquid Audio & Music Power Network.Project highlights included a complete redesign for @Home Network, the first broadband cable internet service.

Strategic direction, design management and production of Passport Media's enhanced audio/CD+ products. Received PRINT magazine's 1995 Interactive Design award for Gavin Bryar's enhanced CD "The Sinking of the Titanic" which was created for Polygram Records. Clients: PolyGram Records, Island Records, Mercury Records, PolyGram Classics & Jazz, and A&M Records. While at Passport Media I was also the creative lead on the Product team that put the first music video on a commercial mixed mode CD. This was done for the A&M Records artist Monster Magnet on their 1995 release "Dopes to Infinity."