A Creative Professional
Phoenix, Arizona Area
- Current
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- Creative Professional at Ben Leivian
- Past
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- Senior Designer at CustomerFunding
- Graphic Artist / Pre-Press Coordinator of Western States at Tri-Auto Enterprises / Trace Communications
- Web Programmer / Graphic Designer at Deer Valley Unified School District #97
- Graphic Designer / Digital Prepress at DVUSD Graphic Communications
- Production Assistant at DVUSD Graphic Communications
- Education
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- Glendale Community College
- Mountain Ridge High School
- Recommended
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8 people have recommended Ben - Connections
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84
connections
- Industry
- Graphic Design
- Websites
Ben Leivian’s Summary
What gets me excited? Among others: Style sheets, nested styles, baseline grids, version control, small type, vectors, generated indexes & tables of contents, variables, keyboard shortcuts, guilloche patterns, offset & letterpress printing, camera raw, scripting, and shades of gray.
Ben Leivian’s Specialties:
Adobe: Indesign CS3, Photoshop CS3, Bridge CS3, Illustrator CS3, PageMaker 7.0, Premiere, After Effects, Acrobat, Distiller. Apple: Aperture, Keynote. Miscellaneous: QuarkXpress, Pitstop, Font Management. Platforms: Mac OS9, Mac OSX, Windows, Linux. Languages: xHTML, CSS, PHP, SVN, MySQL, AppleScript.
Ben Leivian’s Experience
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Creative Professional
Ben Leivian
(Graphic Design industry)
May 2001 — Present (8 years 3 months)
Freelance graphic design, web development and technical support.
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Senior Designer
CustomerFunding
(Graphic Design industry)
January 2007 — March 2009 (2 years 3 months)
Worked with a team of ASP.net developers creating beautiful, user friendly websites. I structured these sites using a theme perspective: Using a shared CSS framework for reset, typography & grid along with a separate style sheet for branding. My process involved hand coding XHTML & CSS and creating working development versions using PHP, Apache server and SVN for version control.
Recent work: autocreditfinders.com | cfpayday.com | carloansnow.com | customerfunding.com
In 2007 I put in tremendous effort developing the Direct Mail Department. I built and currently maintain a massive library of creative variable-data artwork. I was also responsible for strengthening the company's image by setting strict branding rules. I applied those rules by designing new stationary, saddle-stitched catalogs, brochures, and a 70-page dealer handbook.
To keep up with the printing demand, I brought the printing and bindery in-house. This move saved the company significant money and added quality control. -
Graphic Artist / Pre-Press Coordinator of Western States
Tri-Auto Enterprises / Trace Communications
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Graphic Design industry)
April 2006 — December 2006 (9 months)
Independently designed direct mail solutions for automotive dealerships nationwide. Compiled scripts to automate inefficient pre-press and design tasks. Responsible for maintaining a stable, up-to-date workstation along with file redundancy across multiple networked volumes.
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Web Programmer / Graphic Designer
Deer Valley Unified School District #97
(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)
March 2005 — March 2006 (1 year 1 month)
Worked in a team developing dynamic web applications using PHP and MySQL. Responsible for creating and standardizing graphic front ends for production web sites. Redesigned intranet sites using semantically correct valid xHTML and CSS. Applied interactive design principles, usability, and branding techniques to projects.
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Graphic Designer / Digital Prepress
DVUSD Graphic Communications
(Educational Institution; 11-50 employees; Printing industry)
May 2001 — March 2005 (3 years 11 months)
Designed layouts for process & spot color offset printing using industry standard editing tools. Applied expert level photo editing, color correction, illustration, and page layout skills. Trained and oversaw new employees with typesetting/design software, computer os, and production equipment. Accurately converted customer art to meet commercial offset printing requirements. Utilized digital RAW photography to capture and convert images for use in projects. Maintained efficient communication between in house production team, outside print services, and clients. Worked with outside services such as image setters, photo studios, custom media print services, web-press print services. Converted publications to the web as needed.
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Production Assistant
DVUSD Graphic Communications
(Educational Institution; 11-50 employees; Printing industry)
January 2001 — May 2001 (5 months)
Operated perfector and single color offset printing press. Operated binding equipment, digital production equipment, and design software.
Ben Leivian’s Education
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Glendale Community College
Digital Media, 3D Modeling/Animation 2000 — 2002
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Mountain Ridge High School
1997 — 2000
Additional Information
Ben Leivian’s Websites:
Ben Leivian’s Interests:
photography, drums, motorcycles, investing, health
Ben Leivian’s Groups:
Refresh Phoenix, Ad2Phoenix, Gangplank, Tempe Nerds, Creativebits.org
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Ad2 Phoenix -
HONDA Motorcycle Owners and Enthusiasts -
InDesign Users Group -
Refresh - Promoting design, technology,and usability. -
Phoenix Advertising and Marketing Professionals -
Adobe Software Users -
Graphic Designers Professional Group -
Ignite Phoenix -
CIK Enterprises Alumni -
Refresh Phoenix
Ben Leivian’s Honors:
Gold Medal awarded — "Desktop Publishing", VICA SkillsUSA Conference, AZ, 1999
Gold Medal awarded — "Desktop Publishing", VICA SkillsUSA Conference, AZ, 2000
Ben Leivian’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
