Jesse mellon

 

Seasoned art director with 20+ years agency + in-house CORPORATE design experience

I'm a designer by nature. Growing up in the woods of Pennsylvania, art was an outlet that turned into a passion. After attending art school at the Art Institute in Pittsburgh, I started working as a graphic designer for client-side companies like Accuweather and Vivendi. I've built identity systems for MP3.com and worked with clients like Sony while at Sapient. I now apply my branding and identity expertise on the client side to build brands.

 
 
 

EXPERIENCE

Resume (PDF)

SUMMARY

  • Art director/Graphic/UI designer with 20+ years experience in online and offline marketing platforms, programs, and campaigns for biotech, entertainment, and big data clients

  • Design team leader who translates business goals into relevant, engaging visual marketing. Mentor junior designers

  • Collaborate with stakeholders, executives, engineers, UX designers, and developers

  • Hands-on creator of responsive websites, multimedia campaigns, video, outdoor, mobile, and print collateral

  • Data-driven artist immersed in issues of color, composition, iconography, typography, usability, information architecture, and navigation, among others

EDUCATION

B.S. in Graphic Design, Art Institute of Pittsburgh (emphasis on visual communications and advertising design)

 

TECH SKILLS

  • Adobe Creative Cloud (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign)

  • Figma

  • HTML, CSS

  • Microsoft Office, Google Workspace

 

EXPERIENCE

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BRAND + CREATIVE
July 2024–Present | Quantum-Si | San Diego, California

  • Direct comprehensive creative strategy and brand management for 200-person proteomics company

  • Lead visual communications across all brand touchpoints and marketing channels

  • Oversee and implement creative execution of corporate identity, marketing materials, and product launches

  • Maintain all aspects of creative, including branding, website, social media, print and digital collateral, advertising, packaging, presentation decks, tradeshow collateral, video, photography, and product design

  • Maintain visual and editorial corporate style guide and asset libraries for use by partners, global distributors, agencies, and contractors

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BRAND + CREATIVE
June 2021–June 2023 | PacBio | San Diego, California

  • Led creative, brand, + web teams for 700+ person California-based life sciences company

  • Led company rebrand in 2022 (including logo, iconography, typography, photography, color, and editorial standards)

  • Created and maintained 40-page visual and editorial corporate style guide for use by employees, partners, global distributors, and contractors (with a simplified “just the facts” version for internal distribution)

ART DIRECTOR
January 2020–June 2021 | Codex DNA | San Diego, California

  • Oversaw all design for San Diego-based biotech startup

  • Re-branded company in 2020

  • Formalized and maintained all aspects of design

ART DIRECTOR
JUNE 2019–January 2020 | LeadCrunch | San Diego, California

  • Maintained all aspects of graphic design, from website and digital media to signage, CS collateral, presentation decks, whitepapers, and case studies

  • Re-branded company in 2019

  • Special focus on establishing and maintaining high-level identity system (employing Adobe CC libraries), allowing consistent, efficient use of branded materials across multi-touchpoint campaign collateral

MANAGER OF CREATIVE SERVICES
JUNE 2018–JUNE 2019 | NST PR | San Diego, California

  • Oversaw all graphic design—from marketing collateral, to defining and extending corporate identity for roster of clients, including WD-40 and McDonald's

  • Managed all aspects of the design process, including contractors, vendors, and freelancers

ART DIRECTOR + MANAGER OF CREATIVE SERVICES
November 2014–April 2018 | Sequenom (biotech) | San Diego, California

  • Oversaw all branding and design for pioneering biotech company

  • Established branding and guidelines for new and existing products

  • Collaborated with product managers, executive leadership team, vendors, partners, and developers to ensure brand vision was realized for projects including websites, brochures, tradeshow booths and package designs

  • Worked with external agencies to establish and formalize corporate standards for color, typography, iconography, photography and logo usage

ART DIRECTOR + UI DESIGNER
November 2008–November 2014 | Teradata (big-data analytics) | San Diego, California

  • Designed and directed implementation of user interfaces for database-performance applications

  • Collaborated with clients, supervised and mentored junior graphic designers, and worked with developers and UX team to ensure individual deliverables supported company's overarching business goals

  • Crafted and refined branding, iconography, information graphics and UI controls; contributed graphic design to marketing collateral

  • Performed competitive audits; conducted visual explorations; generated screen comps, fleshed out wireframes and developed scalable icon, color, and UI systems; defended use of white space; compiled red-line annotations; tested and optimized with clients and global QA teams

  • Contended with scalability challenges–when 10 icons became 20, dug deep for symbols not already used

ART DIRECTOR
November 2006–November 2008 | Eventful (digital media) | San Diego, California

  • Established visual voice of multichannel campaigns for artist clients from Peter Gabriel to Infected Mushroom; promoted social-media platform with 20+ million users. Collaborated with clients and agencies; led team of graphic and UX designers

  • Conceptualized and directed campaign creative; delivered/optimized analytics-informed landing pages, banner ads, emails; designed custom web portals for music artists

  • Built easily customizable email templates, formulated tests (fueled by campaign analysis and metrics), tested multiple iterations and recalibrated creative based on results

  • Revamped Eventful website; refined logo; forged identities for brand extensions; composed style guide

GRAPHIC DESIGN MANAGER + GRAPHIC DESIGNER
November 2003–November 2006 | Sapient (marketing + tech) | San Diego, California

  • Managed team of designers and developers for Sony’s consumer electronics web presence; partnered with client, project manager and UX lead to build websites, emails, landing environments and online advertisements

FREELANCE ART DIRECTOR + GRAPHIC DESIGNER
November 2008–present | San Diego, California

  • Create brand identity and collateral for startups and small businesses

Resume (PDF)