Drew Santo

Current

Designer at optionsXpress

Past

Owner / Operator at Domains For Listings, LLC
Senior Designer at Acquity Group
Freelance Web Designer / Developer at Independent Consultant

Graphics & Animation Intern at Skoebs Enterprises

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Education

Columbia College Chicago
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Recommended

4 people have recommended Drew

Connections

98 connections

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Websites

My Website

Drew Santo’s Summary

Skilled in the latest web development, animation, and design tools, Drew embodies the heart of an artist with tremendous technical savvy and versatility. With experience in media-focused sites, corporate intranets, and e-commerce, Drew stays in tune with end users and his designs reflect and reinforce his passion for user centered design.

Drew Santo’s Specialties:

Interface Design, Front-End Development, Concept Development, Flash Design, Usability Analysis

Drew Santo’s Experience

Designer

optionsXpress

(Public Company; oxps; Financial Services industry)

August 2009 — Present (4 months)
Owner / Operator

Domains For Listings, LLC

(Information Technology and Services industry)

January 2004 — August 2009 (5 years 8 months)

Domains For Listings, LLC provides domain registration services to the general public and specializes in meeting the needs of Real Estate companies and their agents. D4L provides a simple, easy to use API for self registration and management of domain inventory.

Services include:
- Registration at competitive pricing
- Expanded service set at no additional charge
- Web Hosting, Hosted Exchange Server, SSL certificates
- Quintuple-redundant DNS

Provided a hands-off solution to manage a 6,000 domain inventory for Koenig & Strey GMAC Real Estate in Chicagoland.
Services included:
- Bulk registration and DNS/Host configuration on a daily basis
- Bulk renewal of expiring domain names
- Privacy Guard at no additional cost
- Monthly billing with terms
- On-line support
- Worked directly with KSGMAC resources to create the company’s exclusive Single Page Site (SPS) initiative, better utilizing the SEO potential from owning such a large inventory of active domains.
Senior Designer

Acquity Group

(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)

April 2007 — February 2009 (1 year 11 months)

Acquity Group provides innovative digital strategy, interactive marketing and design, and powerful IT planning and execution services to companies such as American Airlines, General Motors, Motorola, Shimano and Burton Snowboards.

- Lead interface design efforts on both the user experience and front-end development teams
- Served as support for primary design and UX teams by offering insight into Acquity's development process
- Developed visual designs in Photoshop / Illustrator / Flash based on wireframe concepts.
- Provided design solutions and alternatives throughout the entire front-end development track of work.
- Developed brand oriented graphics to compliment any given clint's branding specifications
- Optimized Flash components using actionscript 3
- Worked directly with outside creative teams to create concepts and later final designs for content managed websites
- Optimized third party designs to suit enterprise level content management solutions
- Designed secondary pages (forms, store locator, ect.), using high-level concepts, mood boards, etc.
Independantly designed brand oriented interface components when not provided by outside design teams
- Optimized image assets from design teams for ease of use by developers.
- Coded complete page templates for various clients while resources were short at hand.
- Served as QA and integration support for the entire development lifecycle of many projects.
- Provided solutions using valid HTML / CSS techniques.
- Participated in user test observation and research.

Project Highlights:
Sears Holdings Company - MyGofer Commerce Site
Invitrogen - Ecommerce Website
BC Hydro- Intranet
BodogTV - Entertainment / Media Website
Badcock Furniture - Ecommerce Website
Verizon - Intranet Usability Study
The Northern Trust - Financial / Investment Website
American Association of Family Physicians - Website
Freelance Web Designer / Developer

Independent Consultant

(Design industry)

July 2004 — February 2007 (2 years 8 months)

- Served as the primary contact for the entire lifespan of any given project.
- Responsible for the design and implementation of client websites and micro-sites using the most current technologies.
- Worked independently on branding design and website layouts for multiple clients.
- Prepared optimized files ready for SEO and ecommerce integration.
- Re-encoded media for web delivery.

Updates Manager / Web Design Specialist at Cherryone Web
September 2005 - January 2006
-Responsible for the management and delivery of all site updates.
-Delegated and oversaw website updates among qualified staff.
-Expanded and improved design staff by recruiting high quality candidates.
-Mentored, motivated and led entry level design staff
Graphics & Animation Intern

Skoebs Enterprises

(Entertainment industry)

August 2005 — May 2006 (10 months)

Skoebs is a compelling new gaming system that puts a new perspective on traditional card and board games. Hanu!TM is Skoebs Enterprises' flagship game. Hanu! is an exciting memory and matching game that is similar to the card game "The Game of Concentration". Like Concentration, Hanu! is fun and quick to play.

Worked with a small team of Columbia seniors to develop an online multiplayer Flash Game.
- Worked directly with graphic designers and client to maintain a distinct look and feel of interface elements.
- Customized and implemented game logic code from engineers for a more dynamic user tutorial.
- Worked directly with voice talent and audio engineers on tutorial narration voice-over.
- Illustrated and animated character lip-sync using traditional frame-by-frame animation methods in Flash.

Drew Santo’s Education

Columbia College Chicago

BFA , Interactive Arts & Media, Graphics & Animation , 2003 — 2006

- Manifest Urban Arts Festival 2006 entry
- Re:Action 2005 Student Showcase entries
- Worked with a small team to develop a functional online multiplayer flash game.

Activities and Societies:

Interactive Multimedia, Computer Animation, Photography, Graphic Design
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Digital Media , Mechanical Engineering, Radio / Television , 2001 — 2003

Student Aid / Lab Assistant:
- Aided lab classes
- Assisted / Graded / Mentored students
- Maintained "Expert-Level" AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop software mastery

WIDB Student Radio:
- Acted as Graphic Designer and "Webmaster" for widb.net
- Co-Hosted "The Underground Sound" Radio Show with now popular Bay-Area emcee, Influence. The show contributed to the thriving Carbondale underground scene and helped launch a solid underground hip-hop rotation in WIDB's urban music playlists.

Activities and Societies:

WIDB Student Radio, Lab Aid

Additional Information

Drew Santo’s Websites:

My Website

Drew Santo’s Interests:

Design, new technology, gadgets, DIY condo repair, outdoors, camping, dogs, MLS soccer...

Drew Santo’s Groups:

Columbia Alumni Association & Network - CAAN
Acquity Group Alumni
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Mass Communication and Media Arts (formerly CCFA)
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Chicago Front-End Web Developers
CREATIVE DESIGN PROS
Chicago Professional Soccer Fans
WIDB Radio
Red Stars Fans
Fire Fans