Terry Burkes

Illustration/ Animation/ Sound & UI Design
Print & Packaging Graphics

www.tburkes.com

I create quality content (graphics, illustration, animation & soundscapes), and pull it together with code and other digital methods, for both interactive media and print.

As a traditionally trained artist/illustrator who delights in, and has worked with, interactive media since 1992, my unusual depth & breadth of skills in visual communication, advertising, aesthetics, and technology, enable pragmatic yet inspired solutions that effectively reach the intended audience.

Although I can tweak Ajax, Javascript, XML & CSS, & HTML5, I am primarily a user focused front end developer/designer, concerned with branding & intuitive interfaces.

Enterprise Corporate & Small Business Clients include...

...Symantec, LeapFrog.com, Discoverychannel.com, PetStore.com, VISA, Levi, Litton Solid State, Stellex, Filtronic, GNN, AOL, Ascend, Lucent, Raztek, Sage Interactive, Purple Moon, Spotted Pony, Digiville, North Bay Multimedia Assoc, The Digital Village, ConnectMedia, Vision Communication Technologies, Sunline Garden Design, Colleen Mulvahill & J. A.(Dino) Dean (Dance/Sound Theater), MandalaRecords, Zazen Jazz, Resonance Jazz, Eyefull films, BoMedia Slovenian WebTV, & Compound Eye.

Background...

Graduated 1988 Art Center College of Design (Pasadena). BS - Illustration major / fine art minor. Commercial / Advertising bent with an emphasis on branding, story telling and conveying the intended message to, & eliciting the ideal emotional response or action from, the target audience. Honed traditional skills: concept, drawing, painting, composition, color, graphic design. Diversified & built team skills through Bauhaus style cross training & group projects in: fashion photography, environmental design, transportation design and film.

1989 Moved to San Francisco where I waded in creative pools of fine art theater, independent film, and special events. Explored: theater lighting, costume/site/set design and construction, food styling, in-camera special effects, storyboarding, hard work and resourcefulness born of meager budgets.

1990 discovered computers. That's when things started to get really interesting!

1991-96   Remember Multimedia? Peter Gabriel's ground breaking interactive CDROM "XPLORA1"? No? You're probably too young. There were no in house web development teams. It was the digital Wild West, with people pushing boundaries for the love of it. There was no world wide web anywhere near the sense of what we know it now. My specialty was developing overall look and feel with fast loading graphics and animation, within constraints of very persnickety browsers and snail paced dial up internet.

1996-1999  User Centered Web Developer & UI Architect. Illustration, Gif & Flash animation, CD presentations, CBTs, and Intranet / Internet sites. Advanced illustrated graphics & animation. Website analysis, recommendation & redesign.

2000 - Sr. Designer and Creative Director for PetStore.com . Analyzed & made recommendations for discoverychannel.com. Trained web development team in software and best practices. Rebranded ecommerce website, from sterile cookie cutter corporate template to a warm & whimsical environment appealing to pet owners.

2001-2011 More of the same but with increased focus on: cloud computing, advanced code writing, security, and acknowledgement & integration of social media, empowering client generated updates, and mobile devices. Fancy Flash development is being slowly pushed out by HTML5 & iOS friendly solutions.

Cultural Adaptability...

1995, 2000, 2004 & 2008   Significant travel abroad in Spain, France, Morocco, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia & Brazil.

2008 Dec   Brazil - Developed & taught 6 educational art & global culture workshops for a community center, & trained others to teach them. Combined low tech and high tech presentation methods for non-English speakers from age 6 - adult, up to 24 students & 3 assistants at a time. Some translation help. Bought or solicited local inexpensive & recyled materials.

Tools...

... whatever gets the job done faster and/or better. Currently: laptops, mobile devices & web browsers for UI/web development & testing, Adobe Flash, Photoshop, ImageReady, InDesign, FireWorks, GarageBand, iTunes, Acrobat Professional, Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Dreamweaver and BBEdit, Fetch & Transit for SFTP, Wordpress, digital camera, CDRW burner, scanner, Wacom tablet, traditional illustration media, eyes, hands, brain.

Design philosophy...

... being appropriate to the task at hand, while keeping things fresh, useful & intuitive enough to continually engage the end user.

Technologies change, but never disposable are a well trained artistic eye, & an experienced well rounded perspective on human nature. My learning ground has been a meeting of extremes: advertising, traditional illustration, fine art, lighting & storyboards for theater & film, and digital technology. It is with great enthusiasm that I bring my skills to innovative projects.

Things I appreciate...

... ethics, elegant solutions & humor.

Other Passions..

... fine art painting, industrial design & handmade musical instruments.

Acronyms and key words that apply...

... GUI UI IA QA wire frames multimedia senior lead graphic artist functional specs page level wire frames ability to think strategically high-volume high-visibility enterprise-scale websites time lines information architecture user experience design production ecommerce development lifecycle requirements definition solution analysis writing implementation testing milestone micro-sites banners HTML emails