Ruth McAfee

An award winning, passionate, website UI designer and accomplished developer with 9 years commercial internet design experience.

Strengths:

Technology - expert level with 9 years experience, unless specified

HTML, CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, AJAX, DHTML,
Adobe CS4 - Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, Illustrator, DreamWeaver, Contribute, Adobe Acrobat Pro,
MS Office, Visio,
Windows Vista, Macintosh OSX

ASP & VBScript (intermediate, 4 years), ActionScript (intermediate, 4 years),
SharePoint Server 2007 (elementary, 1 year)

General

A consistent history of seeking, defining and rising to challenge.
Passionate and meticulous in all areas of my work.
Reliably conscientious, diligent, focused and logical.
Genuine and rare asset, comfortable negotiating change.

Experience:

August 2007 - Present: Web designer/developer for Tourism NSW Australia. On any given day I work collaboratively with copy writers, SEO strategists, marketing and advertising teams, print designers, external agencies, and regional offices - both within Australia and internationally; I use specialized front and back-end software applications for content formatting and management, bulk mail, internet competitions, government intranets and websites, and social networks. I take pride in delivering timely, effective, on-budget content for sydney.com visitnsw.com

Responsibilities include

• The design and build and testing of campaign specific static and dynamic pages with back-end integration, for our marketing sites, sydney.com and visitnsw.com, and our corporate website
• Design, building and testing one-off and reusable bulk email templates
• Using EDM systems to send email to over 100,000 subscribers or a targeted subset of; monitoring KPIs, analyzing and presenting results to directors, advising on best practice, technological constraints and solutions.
• Implementing and supervising the use of a Styleguide
• Backup and recovery solutions delivered proactively and under-pressure
• Creating graphics, display ads and banners in static, gif or flash formats
• Application and creation of stylesheets
• Integration and testing of externally built Flash, HTML, XML, CSS, applications or units to the local CMS
• Knowledgesharing

Highlights

• Designing for SharePoint, the current user User Interface of the NSW Department of State and Regional Development intranet
• Implementing this design as a fully functional test site in Microsoft Sharepoint Server 2007, for end user testing
• Designing the current User Interface of the Australian Goverment Department of Industry & Investment NSW Website
• Building the templates for this site in standards compliant xhtml and css
• Integration of the award winning MySpace MySydney campaign with our U.S. international site for http://us.sydney.com/
• EDM partnership with Australia's largest retailer, resulting in an immediate 56% increase in visitation with an additional 20% in the following week; elevating visitnsw.com to #1 in the Australian market share tables for the week of 13-19 April 2008 according to Hitwise

April 2005 - August 2007: Web designer/developer at LexisNexis Asia Pacific. My responsibilities as sole web developer included, maintenance, administration and development of all LexisNexis Australia and LexisNexis New Zealand websites, intranets, and bulk email. I administered and trained 40-plus non-technical content editors spread across the Asia-Pacific region (including Singapore, China, Japan, India, and Malaysia), using Macromedia Contribute, wrote and implemented test strategies and solutions to meet requirements of usability, appearance and accessibility. I responded to customer requests, liaised with third party vendors and global LexisNexis web solutions teams. I both wrote new, and worked from existing creative and technical briefs, complying with style guides, and web standards.

April 2003 - 2005: Independent website designer, developer and contractor. Liaising directly with my clients, I provide entire web solutions from logo and graphic design, web design and development, to navigational flowcharts, usability and hosting services. For work 100% my own, please see Varsity Travel, Peter Vernon Architects, White-Box Architects, Airlie House B&B, Essential Care Services, and Exploration Solutions. I have contracted for XM-Asia where I developed several promotional flash animations for Telstra Mobile, Nutrimetics, as producer of all e-business content on both the public and consultant websites, including EDM, Digital Wranglers, UK based agency, Liquorice (now defunct), and CreativEngine (see below).

2004: Web Producer at Interactive Agency, CreativEngine (now BlueArc Group). My responsibilities included design and development of new webpages, email templates, and graphics; editing and updating legacy sites; liasing with clients for content and sign-off; trouble shooting, testing and repairs. Larger clients include: Clearasil for Men, Willoughby Council, Spinners, Brandenburg Orchestra, Galderma - Treat skin Cancer, BlueScope Steel, PowerSponsorship.

2002 - 2003: Front-end Developer/Designer for LiquidVision. My responsibilities included concepting and art direction, webpage and interaction design (including flash), html and javascript editing - by hand. Clients include, Freedom, Revlon, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Over Fifties Mutual Investment Group, Actil.

2001: Internship at global hitech consultancy MarchFIRST (now defunct). Director's Assistant and Production Artist for sites including Dentsu and Visa.com. Researched and developed flash content for the 2001 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Volunteered on the construction of littlekidsrock.org. My contribution took the final design in static illustrator file format to dynamic html.

Education:

SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY (USA) Multimedia Studies Program: September 1999 - August 2001
completed "Certificate in Internet Design and Technology". grad page

Awarded Robert Bell Outstanding Achievement Award 2001

WELLINGTON POLYTECHNIC DESIGN SCHOOL (New Zealand) 1989 - 1991
awarded "Diploma of Textile Design".

CANTERBURY UNIVERSITY (New Zealand) Art School: 1988
completed 36 credits towards BFA

Interests:

Travel, Technology, Organic gardening, Music (esp. live), and food.