This gallery showcases my employment and freelance experience across several sets of skills. The overarching theme of my work career and life has been that I have mostly made my living from my creativity, directly or indirectly, from creative work across several interrelated disciplines: graphic design, graphic arts, illustration, typography, book and magazine design, publishing; audio production, music composition and performance; and writing and editorial work.
Progressing through this CV gallery, with commentaries on each page, there are: a list of skills distilled from a lifetime of work: a selected employment history reflecting Agile experience; and a sequence of selected overviews of employment, education, organizations, awards, and artistic accomplishments.
At the end of the gallery are links to downloadable PDF versions of my skills resumé, CV, and master career overview.
Although the Agile workplace model became formalized in the early 2000s, I discover that I have been working within that paradigm for most of my career, for clients both internal and external. The Agile framework of continuous contact with the client, and incremental revision, is very familiar.
While researching Agile and its associated methods, I’ve come to understand that I have experience working in environments that used Agile principles. Much of my time in the graphic arts involved intensely iterative and collaborative environments, and moving to an explicitly Agile team or company would be an easy adjustment.
I have reviewed Edward Tufte’s books, three of which I already owned, and have found a direct connection between his ideas and the books of Jan V. White, a designer and educator who was central to my own education. There is a direct lineage there in the strategy of effective presentation of ideas and data in graphic format. This underlines my sense that I had been working in Agile situations for many years, without explicitly having that as a label.
Continuous communication with the client while working on incremental changes to the project and product was the standard work mode throughout my career in the desktop-publishing-based graphic design, illustration, book and magazine publishing, typography, and printing fields that have been the bulk of my lifetime of work. It is my preferred working style.
So, although I am not formally certified in Agile, it is a familiar paradigm and mode. Most freelance creatives work this way as well, in fact if not in name.
•
Selected Employment History
Design, Illustration & Printing • 2017–Present Arthur Durkee Arts, Ypsilanti, MI
Letterpress printing, graphic design, illustration, typography.
Pre-Press Operator, Photographer, Graphic Artist • 2005 Precision Graphics, San Leandro, CA
Sales & customer service, digital pre-press, portrait & product photography, web design, commercial printing development, graphic design & illustration.
Typeface Designer • 2003–2004 Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN
Creation of original Dakota language fonts for use in dictionaries & other publications. Publication credit: all fonts for 500 Dakota Language Verbs (2004).
Freelance Typographer & Typeface Designer • 2003–2004 University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Creation of original customized typefaces for Native American & Language Depts.
Senior Graphic Artist/Illustrator • 2000–2001 Llewellyn Worldwide, St. Paul, MN
Original illustration, design & typography for catalog marketing publications, book & magazine design, publicity media. Templates & style guides for publications.
Graphic Artist/Illustrator • 1997–1999 CPi (Creative Publishing international), Minnetonka, MN
Original illustrations, layouts, templates & logo designs for direct-market how-to book series including Black & Decker Home Improvement Library. Created templates, layouts, art & typography for NorthWood Press wildlife & outdoor living books.
Senior Graphic Artist & Lead Designer • 1992–1997 Demco Media, Madison, WI
Design, illustration, typography, database publishing, art direction, advertising.