Jean Simmons
Web Developer | Otaku
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.
Education & Work Experience
Art Institute of California - Orange County | Bachelor of Science Interior Design with Honors | 2009
Irvine Valley College | Associate in Science | Japanese | 2011
Saddleback College | Associate in Science | Web Designer & ECommerce Design | 2015
Jean Simmons Design Consultancy | Freelance Web Developer | 2015 - current
ISS Designs | Designer | 2011 - current
GAA Architects | Project Coordinator | 2009 - 2011
Hatch Design Group | Interior Design Intern | 2008
A.G.Edwards/ Wachovia Securities/ Wells Fargo Advisors | Branch Operations Specialist | 2003 - 2008
People Skills
Team Collaboration
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
Provided project support by wearing any hats necessary to keep the design process going
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
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
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
Photoshop
FS122 Image Manipulation, ID2215 Perspective and Rendering,
ID2225 Presentation Techniques
Marketing/ print asset layout creation
Print asset standardization,
Web asset creation and maintenance
Illustrator
CIM 225.1 Adobe Creative Suite
Print asset maintenance
InDesign
CIM 225.1 Adobe Creative Suite
Front End Web Design Skills
Javascript & JQuery
CIMW 260 Javascript & JQuery
Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com
HTML
CIM 271A Web Development: XHTML/ HTML Beginner
CIM 271B Web Development: XHTML/ HTML Advanced
CSS
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.
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.
Current Project Under Construction | snoobli.com
Twitter Bootstrap
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.
Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com
Dreamweaver
CIM 243.1 Dreamweaver I
CIM 243.2 Dreamweaver II
Adobe Flash
CIM 264A Web Animation: Flash - Beginner
CIM 264B Web Animation: Flash - Intermediate
Edge Animate
CIM 148 Web Development: Edge Animate
WordPress
CIM 144 Wordpress
Git/ Github & VCM
GIT Basics Track
Github | jean@jsdcglobal.com
Back End Web Development & Programming Skills
PHP
CIM 251 Dynamic Web
Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com
MySql
CIMW 105 Intro SQL and MySQL
Current Project Under Construction | trosperdds.com
Ruby on Rails
Rails Development Track
Ruby Path
Ruby Track
Make a Rails App Course
Current Project Under Construction | snoobli.com
Java
CS 38 Java Programming
Android Apps & Android Studio
CIMP 220 Android Apps - Beginner
More Skills
Technical Writing
Update project product specifications
Create custom installation manuals for custom design clients
Create modular product installation instruction
Maintain all product technical information
SketchUp
Create all custom client design models
Create and maintain all office modeling standards & blocks
Social Media Marketing
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
日本語を話せますか?
JA 1 Elementary Japanese - JA 4 Intermediate Japanese
Conversational Spanish
¿Hablamos español?
SPA 101 Elementary Spanish - SPA 201 Intermediate Spanish
Piano
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
949.682.5732
jean@jsdcglobal.com