John Chidiac

Creative Director

Accomplished interactive creative director with over 15 years experience, passionate about creating innovative and engaging user-centered design. Possess rare combination of creative, technical and management skills, with ability to inspire teams to devise, execute and deliver world-class interactive experiences.

Work Experience

CE Interactive

Creative Director

Wide range of responsibilities including code writing and interactive design, management duties such as daily stand-up meetings and data aggregation, and strategic role in branding and product development.
-- Led series of company branding exercises that produced successful brand identity,
“Wirewize – Help is Here”.
-- Created innovative web app which enables client to customize and launch Wirewize under their own brand with as little as two days’ work.
-- Successfully dealt with clashing personalities on team, facilitating consensus and establishing action plans to meet crucial deadlines
April 2007 - New York, New York, United States

The Princeton Review

Interactive Art Director

Improved utility and experience of company’s web site and suite of web applications. Worked with product managers and business leads in Agile environment to develop use cases and design user interfaces.
-- Redesigned user registration/account creation interface resulting in a 12 percent improvement in new user registrations and 20 percent increase in information opt-ins.
-- Conceptualized cutting-edge framework to allow website to continually adapt based on incremental collection of user input.
-- Developed criteria to guide design improvements to match user needs.
April 2006 - April 2007 New York, New York, United States

Independent Art Director

Work with angel investors and small businesses designing corporate identity, advertising, website, presentation, and collateral. Diverse industries include financial services, air travel, video intelligence, biotechnology, entertainment, telecommunications, and consumer products.
-- Helped clients articulate previously unfocused design goals.
-- Delivered versatile design and technical solutions on tight deadlines
-- Maintained loyal client base by consistently providing top-quality work
August 1995 - New York, New York, United States

The Princeton Review

Senior Graphic Designer

Simultaneously handled multiple projects in print and electronic media for 30 offices across country and in-house marketing department. Worked closely with marketers to develop ideas and design creative material for special promotions throughout the year.
-- Identified inefficiencies and developed technical solutions to dramatically reduce errors and production time by 75%.
-- Redesigned course search tool to provide prospective students with information most relevant to them in least amount of time; tool still in use today.
November 2002 - April 2006 New York, New York, United States

Food & Wine Magazine

Senior Graphic Designer

Designed marketing and promotional materials for magazine and advertisers. Worked with art director, marketing director and sales staff to generate concepts. Projects included in-book ads, advertorials, invitations, signage, direct marketing pieces and premiums.
November 2001 - November 2002 New York, New York, United States

The Growth Strategy Group

Senior Graphic Designer

Worked with clients and firm’s principals to establish goals, design direction and budget. Designed logos, brochures, websites, presentations and ads for firm’s clients in commercial real estate, construction, relocation services and architecture.
September 1997 - September 1999 New York, New York, United States

ACMEprint Postcards

Graphic Designer/Production Manager

Managed intake, prepress and delivery of weekly print runs of 25–50 postcards. Designed postcards visual identity, business forms, promotional materials, and ads for company and its clients.
June 1996 - September 1997 New York, New York, United States

Portofoto Visuals

Graphic Designer/Production Manager

Designed and produced websites and interactive portfolios for photographers, graphics for industrials, ads, forms and sales collateral.
March 1995 - August 1996 New York, New York, United States

Creative/UX Director

Lead creative and product design for multi-use, community and enhanced services platform used by enterprise and global higher education institutions.
• Product: Drive, conceive, design, and deliver flows, wireframes, and hi-fi visual designs for mobile-responsive, white-labeled web platform; Develop and continuously improve process to efficiently translate requirements into deliverables for tech team; Push tech to adopt more dynamic processes and technologies to improve user experience
• Brand: Developed and designed brand and identity for company and ancillary products
• Creative: Conceive, copy write, design, and prepare production-ready identity and marketing and sales collateral
• Management: Member of management team, participating in major business and as affect the company, marketing, product, and staffing
October 2011 - Present New York, New York, United States

Education

Rhode Island School Of Design (RISD)

BFA in Illustration

September 1990 - June 1994 Providence, Rhode Island, United States

Skills

Acrobat, Adobe Creative Suite, BBEdit, CSS, Excel, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, JavaScript, Keynote , Linux/Unix, Mac OS, MySQL, Perl, PHP, PostgreSQL, Powerpoint, Regular Expressions, Ruby On Rails, SVN, Unix Shell, User Experience Deisgn, Visual Design, Windows, Word, X/HTML,