Jean Simmons

Web Developer | Otaku

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Welcome to My Curriculum Vitae

Take a look around for a quick glimpse of my educational background and past work experience. Click on the various links and icons to get more information on the classes and organizations that I've been involved with. When you're all done exploring, contact me via phone or email to talk more about my involvement with your organization. Happy adventuring, and I look forward to meeting you!

- Jean Simmons

Once upon a time, there was me.

And what can I say about myself? Well for starters, I am a multi-disciplined designer focused on an aesthetically pleasing, yet practical and logical user experience. This user experience should not only be enjoyable for the end users of any project, but also add value to the bottom line of the project owner. I believe in a tailored approach in which lifestyle and brand drives project objectives and decisions, and strive to create amazing designs that truly exemplify the mantra that less is more. Nietzsche once said that truth is a reality that is formed through the perspectives of many, and I like to find the truth in design through not only my many experiences, but also the experiences of the people who I work with throughout the design process.

Jean Simmons at the Salk

Education & Work Experience

Art Institute    Art Institute of California - Orange County | Bachelor of Science Interior Design with Honors | 2009

Irvine Valley College    Irvine Valley College | Associate in Science | Japanese | 2011

Saddleback College    Saddleback College | Associate in Science | Web Designer & ECommerce Design | 2015

Jean Simmons Design Consultancy    Jean Simmons Design Consultancy | Freelance Web Developer | 2015 - current

ISS Designs    ISS Designs | Designer | 2011 - current

GAA Architects    GAA Architects | Project Coordinator | 2009 - 2011

Hatch Design Group    Hatch Design Group | Interior Design Intern | 2008

A.G.Edwards    A.G.Edwards/ Wachovia Securities/ Wells Fargo Advisors | Branch Operations Specialist | 2003 - 2008

People Skills

Collaboration
Project Leadership
Relationship Management
Organization

Team Collaboration

ISS Designs Web meeting with each custom client to create tailored product design



Working in a team is sometimes essential to project completion. As a multidisciplined designer my understanding of a team spans from the client, the end user, Graphic Designers, UI/ UX Designers, Front End Web Designers, and Back End Web Developers. With my overall understanding of the entire design process, working with many different types of team members is seamless.

Project Leadership

GAA Architects Provided project support by wearing any hats necessary to keep the design process going


ISS Designs Self direct streamlining of design process and order processing



Sometimes there are just too many things that need to be done to complete a project. Over the years I've found that in most situations, someone always needs to voluntarily step up and fill in any gaps or pick up any balls that could potentially get dropped. Though the design process requires the creativity of the team, it also requires focus and dedication and a steady work ethic toward completion. As a project coordinator at GAA Architects, and also as a designer at ISS Designs, I have always made it a point to anticipate potential service gaps and worked to create processes that allowed the design team to pursue their creativity without having to worry about important design details falling by the wayside.

Relationship Management

A.G.Edwares Provided day to day account support for over 100 branch offices at the home office
As a branch employee provided additional and relevant services and reports to enhance customer relations


ISS Designs Provide customers with relevant design recommendations outside the project scope within my area of expertise



Having spent a large amount of my work life at a brokerage firm, I learned the importance of relationship management early on. In the investment industry, relationship management is the correlative relationship between related services and the development of these relationships to enhance your client's bottom line which results in enhancing your own organizational bottom line. But how does that apply outside of the investment industry? Simply put, clients have many needs, but may have little understanding of how these needs relate, or how to fulfill these needs. Analyzing a client's overall organizational needs outside of specific web services can lead to additional services including graphic design, photography, print media, and social media marketing among others.

Communication

It goes without saying, but a project's success hinges on the existence of excellent communication skills. Communication skills are not limited, though, to a person's ability to get their point across. Great communication includes the ability to listen and also to read between the lines as much as the ability to say what you're trying to say through words, diagrams, illustrations, and examples. In every job that I've ever held, I have made it a point to truly listen to my client's needs and to provide them with that thing that they truly needed in return.

Organization

Tying together all the skills any good designer should have are great organization skills. For me, as a web designer, this means that project files follow a logical hierarchy, code is verified and commented for ease of future maintenance, scripts are concise, modular, and portable, and finally project decisions truly adhere to the overall project concept.

Graphic Skills

Illustrator
InDesign

Photoshop

Art Institute FS122 Image Manipulation, ID2215 Perspective and Rendering,
ID2225 Presentation Techniques



GAA Architects Marketing/ print asset layout creation



ISS Designs Print asset standardization,
Web asset creation and maintenance



Illustrator

Irvine Valley College CIM 225.1 Adobe Creative Suite





ISS Designs Print asset maintenance

InDesign

Irvine Valley College CIM 225.1 Adobe Creative Suite

Front End Web Design Skills

HTML
CSS
Bootstrap
Dreamweaver
Flash

Javascript & JQuery

Saddleback College CIMW 260 Javascript & JQuery





Jean Simmons Design Consultance Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com

HTML

Saddleback College CIM 271A Web Development: XHTML/ HTML Beginner
CIM 271B Web Development: XHTML/ HTML Advanced




CSS

Irvine Valley College CIM 249 Cascading Style Sheets



Less/CSS

Less offers the ability to create programmable css that is both efficient and portable. Supplementing my education with an understanding of this popular style sheet syntax made perfect sense.


Jean Simmons Design Consultance Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com

Sass/ CSS

Working hand in hand with Rails, Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets are the style sheet of choice for Rubyists the world over. Though similar in intent to Less, Sass offers even more style sheet programmability and is a great language to include in my projects.


Jean Simmons Design Consultance Current Project Under Construction | snoobli.com

Twitter Bootstrap

Treehouse Rails Front End Development Course

Brackets & Coding with Advanced Text Editors

An important part of web design is understanding the underlying code used to build a site. Though I can wysiwyg with the best of them, my prefered working style is to use an advanced text editor like Adobe Brackets to develop my own code while marrying my solutions with proven, open source plugins and frameworks as needed.


Jean Simmons Design Consultance Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com

Dreamweaver

Irvine Valley College CIM 243.1 Dreamweaver I
CIM 243.2 Dreamweaver II


Adobe Flash

Saddleback College CIM 264A Web Animation: Flash - Beginner
CIM 264B Web Animation: Flash - Intermediate



Edge Animate

Irvine Valley College CIM 148 Web Development: Edge Animate

WordPress

Irvine Valley College CIM 144 Wordpress





Git/ Github & VCM

Treehouse GIT Basics Track



Jean Simmons Design Consultance Github | jean@jsdcglobal.com

Back End Web Development & Programming Skills

Java
Android Studio

PHP

Irvine Valley College CIM 251 Dynamic Web




Jean Simmons Design Consultance Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com

MySql

Saddleback College CIMW 105 Intro SQL and MySQL





Jean Simmons Design Consultance Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com

Ruby on Rails

Treehouse Rails Development Track



CodeSchool Ruby Path




Codecademy Ruby Track
Make a Rails App Course



Jean Simmons Design Consultance Current Project Under Construction | snoobli.com

Java

Irvine Valley College CS 38 Java Programming



Android Apps & Android Studio

Saddleback College CIMP 220 Android Apps - Beginner



More Skills

Japanese
Spanish
Piano
Photography

Technical Writing

GAA Architects Update project product specifications



ISS Designs Create custom installation manuals for custom design clients Create modular product installation instruction Maintain all product technical information

SketchUp

ISS Designs Create all custom client design models
Create and maintain all office modeling standards & blocks



Social Media Marketing

ISS Designs Having worked for a webstore I am aware of social media outlets available for marketing including grass roots advertising through value added content creation in addition to more traditional web advertising with partners like Google and Facebook.

Conversational Japanese

Irvine Valley College 日本語を話せますか?
JA 1 Elementary Japanese - JA 4 Intermediate Japanese

Conversational Spanish

St Louis Community College ¿Hablamos español?
SPA 101 Elementary Spanish - SPA 201 Intermediate Spanish

Piano

Saddleback College MUS 54A Beginning Piano



Photography

Today's Instagram sensation is yesterdays amateur photographer. Photography today is raw and personal and with my design eye I can provide royalty free images that capture the essence of our prescribed design direction.

Contact Me

Jean Simmons at the Salk

Call 949.682.5732

Mail jean@jsdcglobal.com