"The man who has no imagination has no wings." -Muhammad Ali
"The creation continues incessantly through the media of man. But man does not create, he discovers." -Antoni Gaudi
"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art." -Susan Sontag
web design
graphic design
technical illustration
animal illustration
branding
logos
labels
PDFs
book covers
cd covers
business cards
brochures
flash animation
web administration
web project management
web quality assurance
What's New
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
I am still employed at Avenue A | Razorfish. My skills have expanded quite considerably and will continue to grow while at Razorfish. Thus I am not looking for full time work. I am however looking for some small freelance projects that can be done outside of normal working hours. If interested, please visit my business website: Creative Swirl and use the contact form located there to tell me about your project.
Known as a results-oriented, self-motivated achiever with a reputation for excellence and a strong work ethic
Known for client/customer focus, ability to deliver to and above expectations and strong customer relationships
Team builder and player, no one person is an island
Sound problem solving skills, and interpersonal skills. Approachable to any kind of constructive criticism
Creative, well disciplined professional with an extremely strong customer service background
Customer Satisfaction
In Depth Information
I have yet to meet anyone better at coding HTML than myself. I cut my teeth on a 60,000 page all html web site (Tivoli.com). After that level of immersion in complicated nested table code, nothing is difficult. I was solely responsible for the CSS files for that site as well.
As the web designer at Tivoli, I designed the look and feel of the masthead and the left navigation along with the footer of the site. This involved extensive planning and hard detailed work to launch the project smoothly. This is not an easy task when the site was 60,000 flat HTML pages linking to server side includes with imperfect code design. I was solely responsible for the redesign done in 2001. I personally edited every page of the 60,000 page site as the original coding was not perfectly created for the server side includes. The redesign included educating the rest of the team I worked with on the changes and what they meant for their everyday work. I gave them the creative direction of the site, thus colors used in which particular situations. I worked with the IBM.com web team to help move Tivoli.com towards an IBM look and feel for the future move to IBM.com.
The only place to see my work at Tivoli would be to see the images I have in my portfolio. Since I left in February 2002, the entire site has moved to IBM.com and completely changed. This was the majority of my professional web work.
My professional experience does not fully represent my graphic skills. I have been honing my skills since I was 10 when I seriously though about becoming an artist. I have concentrated on my own, through schooling, and professional work to obtain the skills needed to be successful in this field. My work results in mostly praise. View my artwork that spans over a longer period of time: http://www.sherriwyche.com/art/
Example of ingenuity:
Saved money, time, and redundancy for the storage division at Tivoli while working as an HTML coder. I created a solution to resemble database functionality without the need for a backend database system creation. I used server side includes and HTML. This no longer exists online.
Example of learning ability and flexibility:
Learned Flash while on the job as web designer. Initial learning done editing and updating multi-million dollar Flash sitelet created by outside firm - MarchFIRST. Later projects involved creating animated gifs and some action scripting. None of this exists online now.
Example of design range:
Initiated work on branding including everything from business cards and letterhead to cd labels coordinating everything to create a cohesive company in print for a new startup company. This is my marketing communications experience.
I am able to illustrate just about anything I set my mind to doing. From drawing animals up to highly detailed and realistic vector illustrations of computer hardware, I am skilled enough to create anything. The hardware illustrations are proprietary so I am not able to display them in my portfolio.
Especially concerned about accessibility and cross browser compatibility:
As for DHTML, I have not used it much due to the fact it is not web accessible for everyone. Its use in navigation leaves out anyone using a screen reader. This is more important than cross browser compatibility as more people use screen readers than use Netscape. Making the site web accessible equates to more users of the site whom are able to order merchandise and more profits. http://www.knowbility.org I did not design this site but they speak more about accessibility here for general information.
Cross browser compatibility has always been important to me as I started out a Netscape user and found it difficult when designers only created for Internet Explorer. Netscape would be a better choice to design since it does not assume as much as IE, thereby the code works more often on all browsers. I believe in having the cleanest most perfectly written code possible and Netscape allows me to check for this though it can seem limiting. I check Netscape 4.8, Netscape 7, IE 5.5, IE 6, Opera 7, and have friends check Macintosh browsers for me.
Usability of a site is important or you lose customers due to the fact a site is too difficult to use. The point is to not make people think too much and make the site seem effortless.
Recent volunteer work to keep my skills sharp:
I was approached to help the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association redesign the home tour web site for this year. They were very pleased with the outcome. The home tour event was this past weekend, June 14-15. The rest of the neighborhood site is not my work, only the home tour area.
I have spent many hours working with MAIN.org in redesigning their web site though the work has not gone live yet. In addition I helped with their latest web raising for local non-profits. In 4 hours I helped redesign and code a new web site for the JJ Seabrook Neighborhood Association. I created the site for someone in the neighborhood to update from the current code. During this event, I discovered how difficult it is to create on the spot and get everything done in a short period of time. It is far from my best work but it shows my ability to get work done under pressure.
I am currently volunteering for GENaustin where I am creating templates for other html coders to work from in the future. This work is in progress so it is not available on the public web site at this time.
