Hi, my name is Kristen Trader and I am the founder of cyaneyed productions. I'm an experienced visual problem solver.
Wondering how I can help you? While ultimately, your company and product must reach its target goals, my job is to explain it all to your audience simply and hopefully make it fun besides.
I've been a professional designer since before I graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, in 1994. I started off with a lot of freelance jobs, but moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I met Patti Sanker and she became my employer and sent me to design at Champion International. I was a designer of training materials, teaching people how not to lose fingers from using paper making machinery the length of football fields.
In 1996 I moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I worked for Simon and Schuster, scanning photos for textbooks, while I took classes at the Columbus College of Art and Design. There's even photographic proof, somewhere in a Simon and Schuster book is a photo of me scanning photos to demonstrate someone scanning photos.
I then moved on to the next step, in 1998 I started working for ThisWeek News, a subsidiary of the Columbus Dispatch. After a year with them, I became the classified chief; in charge of directing/helping a team of 9 to produce 22 classified sections in 9 hours to be printed and distributed to 360,000 homes. Man, one of the toughest jobs I've had, grueling workload, hourly deadlines, working nights for 5.5 years with no windows. I loved that place, learned everything I could about high speed efficient publishing and met friends I still treasure today.
In 2004, I moved to DC to be closer to friends & family and take the next rung of the design ladder.
I became a contractor and worked for The Boss Group. A great team to work for, would've been stranded without their help and introductions. They brought me to Booz Allen Hamilton and there as a contractor still, I became the lead designer for a 100 million dollar contract for the restructuring of all hardware for DFAS. We won the contract. With the thank you emails from the project manager and boss I set out again to do something I've never done before.
I started working for the Discovery Channel as a QC Specialist. (watching TV before you do, for things you'd never see. *grin*) The most challenging job to learn, the most boring job I've had.
In 2005, I left for a security startup company called intelli7, to make twice what the Discovery Channel was paying me. I became intelli7's UI designer and learned a lot about startups, but the company had problems none of us could solve.
2006 found me taking classes at animation mentor and contracting again before finding one of the most exciting jobs since living in the DC area. Currently a UI designer for AOL in dulles, VA. An awesome place to work, with very talented, motivated people. I've learned more in the last 6 months than probably the last year alone. I hope to learn a lot more before its over.