Summary
From my start as a print designer in New York to my current employment as Lead User Experience Designer at Redbeacon in San Mateo, I have always used self-study to ensure my reputation as a largely self-sufficient interactive production resource. I pride myself on being able to bridge gaps in any production environment whether print to web, design to development, or web to mobile.
Testimonials
There is probably not a designer on earth that has more experience understanding the impact of design and development on conversion rate optimization and applying those learning to successful executions. Michael has the rare ability to straddle both design and development and do each with amazing skill and creativity. His dual knowledge give him a distinct skill advantage as he is able to understand the interactions and implications of development on design and design on development. I've has the pleasure to watch Mike grow from a freelance designer with incredible skill to one of the top design/dev guys on the web. Mike will always be my first choice for building pages, applications, brand vision and whatever else is needed to fulfill performance objectives online.
Jonathan Mendez, CEO | Yieldbot
Michael needed minimal time to adapt to our site's look and feel and was producing excellent work within the first few hours.
Phillip James, Founder | Lot18 and Snooth.com
Working with Michael has been a true pleasure. He has the ability to understand a project from a high level and then provide the low level implementation independently.
Jon Aizen, CTO | Dapper.net (from Yahoo)
We've thrown a lot of requests at Michael, asking for quick turnaround time... and he's consistently responded with excellent product.
Kevin Fortuna, partner | Lot18 and AKF Consulting
Our experience with Michael was exceptional. He shows impeccable design taste as well master strong usability/user experience concepts and ideas. His ability to assess customer needs and business purpose, employing those into prototypes and designs is outstanding.
James Weaver, VP of Product | Pandora Data Systems
I came to Michael with a few details for a redesign and trusted his creativity and expertise to create a design that worked with my audience. He delivered with a design that gave my company instant credibility. Michael's eye for design is a rare quality that truly sets him apart from the rest.
Brant Tedeschi, Founder | FantasySP.com
Experience
User Experience Lead at Redbeacon.com
Current • San Mateo, CA
Lead Designer at Tripit.com
Jan 2010 - Jan 2011; San Francisco, CA
Awarded Best Mobile Travel App
Owner, Designer & Developer at PushHandle Inc.
July 2008 - January 2010 • Brooklyn, NY
Senior Art Director at Offermatica/Otto Digital/Omniture (Adobe Omniture)
January 2006 - July 2008 • San Francisco, CA and New York, NY
Interactive Art Director at Spiegel Catalog
June 2005 - January 2006 • New York, NY
Designer at Sirius Satellite Radio
June 2004 - September 2004 • New York, NY
Education
New York University
B.A. - Visual Communications and Media Studies
Parsons School of Design
Certification in Digital Typography and Black and White Photography
New York University
Certification in Multimedia Arts: Macromedia Studio and Adobe Creative Suite
Library
Design
- "Designing for the Social Web" by Joshua Porter
- "Designing Social Interfaces" by Erin Malone
- "Designing Web Interfaces" by Bill Scott
- "Designing Interfaces" by Jenifer Tidwell
- "Designing Web Navigation" by James Kalbach
- "Designing with Progressive Enhancement" by Filament Group
- "Storytelling for User Experience" by Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks
- "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld
- "Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow that Works" by Emily Goto and Emily Cotler
Development
- "HTML5 for Web Designers" by Jeremy Keith (A Book Apart)
- "Javascript: The Definitive Guide" by David Flanagan
- "Javascript Performance Rocks!" by Thomas Fuchs and Amy Hoy
- "JavaScript: The Good Parts" by Doug Crockford
- "Pragmatic Ajax: A Web 2.0 Primer" by Justin Gehtland, Ben Galbraith, and Dion Almaer
- "Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition" by Dave Thomas and David Hansson
- "Ajax on Rails" by Scott Raymond
- "Version Control with Subversion" by C. Michael Pilato
- "PHP in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference" by Paul Hudson
- "Learning Actionscript 2.0 for Macromedia FLASH 8" by Jen deHaan, Peter deHaan
- "PHP5 for Flash" by David Powers
- "TCP/IP Network Administration"by Craig Hunt
Business
- "The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business" by Clayton M. Christensen
- "Google Analytics 2.0" by Jerry L. Ledford
- "Web Analytics Demystified" by Eric T. Peterson
- "Twitter Power" by Joel Comm
- "Viral Loop" by Adam L. Penenberg
- "Dreaming in Code" by Scott Rosenberg
- "Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing" by Alex Wipperfurth
- "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie
Product
- "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug
- "The Upside to Irrationality" by Dan Ariely
- "Getting Real" and "Rework" by 37 Signals
- "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" by Daniel H. Pink
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- Omnigraffle
- CSS3
- HTML & HTML5
- Javascript
- jQuery, jQuery UI, & jQtouch
- Prototype & Script.aculo.us
- JSON
- XML
- PHP
- MySql
- MongoDB
- Actionscript 1,2,3 for Flash
- Google Analytics
- Google Maps API
- Subversion
- Git
- Mercurial
- Ruby on Rails
- Python
- Django
- Apache Web Server
- Xcode and iOS development