Skills

Copywriter & Editor for web and print: Web interface copy [specializing in home, real estate, and web community and connection websites], SEO, web and print catalog copy, marketing copy [pdf], museum blogging, blogging, twittering, help docs [pdf], advertising, naming, humor writing, direct mail [pdf], packaging, business and legal writing, newsletter content [pdf], corporate letters and reports, ecards, scriptwriting.

Graphic Artist Print and web design, GUI design for PC and iPhone apps, publication design; book, magazine, advertising and web illustration, information graphics, branding and identity including logos, colors, packaging, new concepts; comics, graphic novels, how-to illustration, animated ecards and web banners, photoretouching, PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, annual reports [pdf], storyboards, closing gifts, surface design, character development.

Interactive Art Director My storytelling background as a cartoonist and comics editor is the best possible training for understanding interactive user experience. I have extensive writing, art, teaching and communication skills. Please contact me for a full schedule of events and lectures. I also lead Creative Jumpstart sessions at onsite and offsite meetings ranging from one half day to a full week; please contact my office for more information regarding the Creative Jumpstart program.

Software Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign [pdf], Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe ImageReady, Apple Keynote, Apple FinalCut Pro, Microsoft Word08, Microsoft PowerPoint. Mac or Windows platforms.

Experience

Aunt Violet Productions'

• Clients include:
• Air Charter Masters Branding and Corporate ID, web design (in progress) for exclusive private air charter company.
• Jantaa Web design and information graphics for budding educational microloan site.
• SheZoom.com Lead interface copywriter and "voice" of this video social community website.
• Emerald Coast Properties Web Copywriter and interactive web content consultant.
• Present Tense Coaching Branding and ID, web design and development, photoretouching, editing.
• DDB San Francisco Graphic Design and illustration for a food industry website.
• Gumps Catalog copywriter.
• Cognifi Branding and ID, illustration, color consultant.
• BooBooBoulevard.com Creative Director, copywriter, photoretoucher.
• Alorisa Glassworks Branding and ID, web banner production.
• California Magazine Photo and editorial research for this magazine for Cal Berkeley Alumni.
• Segmation Help docs, GUI design, web content, icon design, corporate identity.
• DivineCaroline.com Editor for this women's web magazine.
• WetFeet.com Editor, business-related e-books.
• Stivaletti Cookies Art Direction, copywriting, package design.
• David S. Wright Immigration Law Branding and ID, web design and development, animated banner, editing.
• Kim Flournoy Web Copywriter
• Coastside Coatings Branding logo design, building industry.
• Landmark Education Photoretouching and copywriting.
• RPS Art Director and copywriter for wireless device development; Powerpoint writer and artist.
• Bay Media Arts Copywriting for real estate television show, web content, video editing, illustration and corporate ID.
• A Home Within [pdf] Designed and edited annual report and other graphics.
• MoodLogic Brainstorming meeting facilitator, storyboard artist, corporate cartoonist.
• Visa Corporation Brochure illustration, design, photo retouching.
• Bristol Publishing Created over 300 illustrations for eight cookbooks; designed and illustrated The Wedding Catering Cookbook.
• MacCounsel, BJ Droubi, Harbor Bay Realtors Marketing designer/copywriter [websites,newsletters, bios, promotional campaigns, brochures, direct mail, web design, logos].
• Sun Microsystems Creative facilitator, storyboard artist, corporate cartoonist.
• The Gutenberg Project Logo and animated banner designer/illustrator.
• BlowUp Labs Large-size display design for trade show, copywriting.
• IronSpeed Creative facilitator, comedy and marketing copywriter, animator.
• Dreamsmith Technical writer, legal/construction industry.
• The Good Service Guide Copywriter, home services; catalog design consultant
• Banana Republic Photoresearcher for catalog.
• La Bouquetière Copywriter for bath and body, fragrances.
• Wall Street Journal Illustrator for travel page.
• San Francisco Chronicle Illustrator.
• San Jose Mercury-News Illustrator.

My illustration and editorial writing have also appeared in The New York Times, Chronicle Books, Coldwater Creek, Ten Speed Press, Salon, The Layers Magazine Makeover, IDG, The SF Weekly, SF Bay Guardian, Peninsula A La Carte, Worldwise Publishing, The East Bay Express and many, many websites.

 

Ask Aunt Violet Created syndicated weekly advice comic for alternative weeklies for over 6 years, which appeared in the SF Weekly, Ottawa XPress, Philadelphia Weekly, Chicago Reader, Albuquerque Alibi, Jacksonville Folio, Telluride Watch, Long Island Voice, Buffalo Beat, Salt Lake City Weekly, Creative Loafing and the Madison Isthmus. Wrote Travel Tips, Shopping Tips, Kid Tips, etc.

greatEntertaining Senior Copywriter of consumer and marketing copy for online catalog of gifts, party items, jewelry, bath & body products, gourmet food, candles, lighting, cookbooks, decorating books, serve ware, objets d'art, toys, etc. Also wrote and illustrated "how-to" articles and e-newsletters.

Tavolo.com Lead contract catalog copywriter for Williams-Sonoma style cookware, tabletop, and gourmet food catalog. Ad campaigns; marketing copy.

Creative Assets & Aquent Animated e-cards, Yahoo; web production and illustration, ofoto.com; character and icon development, Netopia.

Blue Mountain Arts Wrote, illustrated, animated digital greeting cards. Concept, script, artwork, animation, audio.

Browseteria Editor/art director/scriptwriter for Pthalo Ptheatre, a soap opera; designed and produced comics news and interview section. Writing, editing, art direction, design, character development, illustration, voice acting, interviewing.

Penguin Books, Simon & Schuster, Women's Glib, The Funny Pages, Wimmin's Comix Featured in both Twisted Sisters graphic novelette anthologies; Mind Riot, graphic novelettes for teens, Women's Glib books & calendars by The Crossing Press, comedy writing for The Funny Pages, Editor/contributor to Wimmins Comix, #8 through #17.

Panetti's Gifts Assistant buyer, display stylist, product developer and salesperson for eclectic Noe Valley crafts gallery/shop. I designed some packaging graphics and wrote product copy for exclusive Panetti's items.

Aunt Violet's Buttonworks I design and make bracelets, earrings and clocks out of antique buttons, carried in the finest shops in San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere; you can also purchase them directly through me. View my Button Bracelets.

Teaching & Appearances

Interviews I have been the subject of interviews in the Arts and Leisure Section of The New York Times, KPFA radio and elsewhere. I have frequently spoken out about comics and the graphic novel media. My heartfelt, down-to-earth approach is a has been a high point of many panels and book-signings and comics conventions from San Diego to Oakland to London, The Commonwealth Club, and bookstores such as A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, Book Passage, Modern Times, Cover to Cover, and Comix and Comics. You can read an interview with me at Vault.com.

Exhibitions Featured in two films about comics, Comic Book Confidential (Canada) and Funny Ladies (Pamela Briggs); other shows include the exhibition She Draws Comics at the SF Cartoon Art Museum, the White Columns Gallery and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in NYC; La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles and the Kunstlerhaus in Stuttgart, Germany; and The Secession Gallery in Vienna, Austria.

Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising I taught Digital Imaging (Adobe CS2 Suite: Photoshop and Illustrator) in in the Visual Communications Department of this accredited fashion design college, aka FIDM.

UC Berkeley Extension I taught Editorial Illustration and Comic Art for four years, in the Graphic Design program. Also taught Illustration as Fine Art.

McIntosh College Dover, New Hampshire: Taught Drawing for Illustration and Design. Helped create new Graphic Design department.

Education & Affiliations

California College of Arts & Crafts Now called California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA. BFA Illustration and Design with a special interest in Animation.

UC Berkeley Extension Film Scriptwriting, Ceramics, Print Production, Children's Book Illustration, Pastel Drawing, Comedy Acting Improvisation.

Queens College, City University of NY Majored in Communication Arts and Sciences and Studio Art for two years.

Member: San Francisco Women on the Web, Business Connections Chapter (SF) of BNI, Writergrrls, Women in Consulting, and the San Francisco Film Society.