Mickey Rossi

www.subflux.com

Objective

To use over 20 years of professional experience in leadership, design and technology to create experiences that enrich people's lives.

Work History

FaceTheFans

Atlanta, Georgia

2012

Creative Director at a social gaming startup. FaceTheFans combines the social gaming of Facebook with the star power of celebrity. You play with real stars in a fantasy-sports style game against real celebrities. After joining FaceTheFans, I overhauled the interface, made improvements to the art and design, produced assets, and worked with celebrities to implement customized avatars and environment suitable to their persona. We had great engagement with players spending an average of 420 minutes per month and an average revenue per paying user of $7.55.

Kaneva

Atlanta, Georgia

2009-2012

Creative Director at a 3D virtual world and social network, currently in open beta. Responsible for the user experience for the client application and its supporting website and tools. Kaneva has seen a number of creative directions prior to my arrival. My task was to bring those various styles into a single cohesive look-and-feel, instituting the processes necessary to insure greater consistency going forward, and to improve overall usability. I defined consistent processes for external content producers to add to the World of Kaneva, and designed tools for the regular users of Kaneva to be able to participate in content creation. I worked closely with Product Management and Executives to increase acquisition and retention

ModoSports, LLC

Atlanta, Georgia

2008-2009

Creative Director for a sports-themed, children's virtual world. Responsible for creative vision, design, architecture, and asset production. Managed and directed internal resources, offshore and domestic animators, modelers and illustrators. A small in-house team meant a hands-on role. In addition to the management responsibilities, I designed, illustrated, documented, modeled, and programmed a substantial portion of the content.

EarthLink, Inc

Atlanta, Georgia

2004-2008

Director of the Interface Design Department. Led a team of Interface Architects, Graphic Designers, Technical Writers, Markup Engineers, and built and managed the Usability Labs. Some of my responsibilities included ownership of the user experience for the majority of EarthLink's and PeoplePC's customer facing client and web applications, collaboration with Product Management, Development, Marketing, Support and others, budgetary and resource decision making for the department, strategic participation in future product ideation and process improvement programs, and managing of third party design and development.

America Online, Inc

Dulles, Virginia

2000-2004

Art Director in the Product Design Group and responsible for many of AOL's core products. Hired, managed and mentored a multidisciplinary team, collaborated to identify requirements, develop strategies, direct look and feel and implementation of the user interface. Products included: AOL Search, AOL Instant Messenger, AOL Calendar, You've Got Pictures, AOL's Community product line, AOL.COM, the AOL Welcome Screen, Digital City, Parental Controls and many more.

DKGdesign

Sterling, Virginia

1993-2000

Part of a two-person design studio. Oversaw all aspects of projects. Met with clients, developed concepts, coordinated with vendors, designed and programmed multimedia CD-ROMs and screen savers, produced illustrations and animations. Clients included: America Online, Britches of Georgetowne and STX Lacrosse.

Coming Attractions

Manassas, Virginia

1989-1993

Part of a small in-house design team for a sportswear manufacturer. Designed and developed graphics and apparel for high-profile fashion clients. Clients included: Reebok, Adidas, Puma, New Balance, Champion, Avia, Russell Athletic, Calvin Klein, Le Coq Sportif. Izod Lacoste, Van Doren Footwear (Vans), The National Zoo, The Smithsonian Institution and MTV.

Shirt Xplosion

Hyattsville, Maryland

1987-1989

Part of a two-person design team for a sportswear manufacturer. Designed and developed graphics for t-shirts and sweatshirts. Clients included: The Washington Redskins and The 17th Street Surf Shop.

Education

Philadelphia College of the Arts

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Bachelor's Degree, 1986

It all started with anthropomorphic pigs...

My first job out of school was doing graphics for imprinted sportswear. The business had a license for the Washington Redskins who were using "The Hogs" as a promotional driver that year. The Redskins had a Super Bowl year, I designed and produced a ton of cartoon football pigs and sold a ton of t-shirts. After the football season, I talked my employer into letting me pitch a line to the locally popular 17th Street Surf Shop. The line sold very well and caught the attention of larger national sportswear lines.

I spent the next couple of years with a large manufacturer designing licensed sportswear lines. I started with surf and skate brands like Vans and Instinct, and then expanded to bigger athletic sportswear companies such as Reebok, Adidas, Puma and high-profile consumer lines for Calvin Klein, Christian Dior and Armani. I was involved in almost all aspects of developing the products, including customer research, brand identity, demographic strategy, graphic design, development, promotion and marketing, and won national awards for introducing innovative production techniques.

I joined a close friend becoming the second person at a start-up company called DKGdesign. Our initial focus was sportswear and we developed product lines for Britches of Georgetowne and STX Lacrosse then expanded into interactive multimedia and traditional print design. We were successful and were setting sales records for our clients, when a contact called us do some work for a company with a venture on this new thing called "The Internet". That was how I started my relationship with AOL, developing the identity for software and print product lines along with interactive marketing media and promotional sites.

After seven years at DKG managing, developing and producing sportswear, multimedia, print and online design, inspired by the potential of the internet, I decided to completely focus on the online medium. I left DKG and took a position working for the local content division of AOL, DigitalCity. We completely redesigned DigitalCity to be easier to use with more depth and relevancy. DigitalCity won a PC Magazine award for best in class and I moved to AOL's prestigious client and core product team.

My first project as part of that team was to breathe life into a handful of stale products: AOL Search, Parental Controls, Instant Messaging and You've Got Pictures (AOL's digital imaging suite). I collaborated with a large and diverse set of stakeholders to develop goals, refine the user interface, increase the performance and enhance the benefit and relevance for the user. Search increased from $85 million to more than $230 million in revenue. Parental Controls saw its feature set expanded, user interface simplified and was a core component of the national advertising campaign. You've Got Pictures was given a unified graphical user interface and saw its usage increase by three times over previous versions. We partnered to integrate rich media from Viewpoint and Macromedia to take AOL's plain Instant Messenger product and enrich it with thousands of buddy icons, wall papers, sounds and even 3D "SuperBuddies" that react to what you type, and made AOL's Instant Messenger one of the member's most beloved products.

My team grew, built by mentoring and hiring, and I was given more products to drive towards success, including AOL.COM, AOL's Community product line and the AOL Welcome screen that was not only the single most viewed page on the entire Internet at that time, but also the most viewed property in any media. After five years with AOL, and the launch of AOL 9.0 Optimized, which had the highest customer satisfaction scores of any release, that's when EarthLink called.

EarthLink's vision and energy was incredibly appealing. A smaller subscriber base than AOL, but an ambitious business plan with product initiatives not only in traditional client and web applications, but entries into exciting new areas like municipal Wi-Fi connectivity, voice over IP, cutting edge communication tools, small device and next generation internet applications, and EarthLink had a strong presence in the access and security space. All of this made for an offer I couldn't refuse.

EarthLink brought me on to help transform the company from just an ISP to a company the develops products and applications. I refined and repositioned the existing design department to be more collaborative and to participate as a strategic partner. I brought in expertise in Flash and Web 2.0 to enhance the existing talent and overhauled the existing processes and documentation. I participated in executive strategic initiatives tasked with making EarthLink a total communications provider and evangelized mature design techniques throughout the company. I rebuilt one usability lab and built another from scratch to connect with our customers and learn how to serve them better. These efforts have resulted in EarthLink's dial brand, PeoplePC, being named JD Powers number one in customer satisfaction. We increased revenue per user within the EarthLink subscriber base, and launched innovative products in the communication and security categories.

ModoSports was a fledgling startup in need of creative leadership and contacted me with an interesting opportunity. I'd be able to use every creative skill I'd developed and integrate everything I've learned about user experience to create a new world. A very small team meant wearing many hats: Architect, Concept Artist, Designer, Illustrator, Modeler, and more, along with managing domestic and offshore talent. Since ModoSports is yet to launch, I can't go into too many details, other than we've built a virtual world entertainment and gaming product targeted at young sports fans. It was an exciting product to develop and an incredible challenge, and I look forward to its debut.

After Modosports wrapped up, I went to work as Creative Director at Kaneva, a 3D virtual world and social network. Prior to my arrival the product went through several changes in its direction and a handful of creative leads. I worked with Product Management and the CEO to develop a better user experience matched with a cohesive style guide and refined processes to keep it consistent. Kaneva is currently in open beta and continues to build upon the foundation I established.

FaceTheFans was looking for experienced creative vision to polish and refine their celebrity-branded social game. I enthusiastically joined the startup and immediately dove in, overhauling the interface, tweaking assets, and giving the whole product a professional level of execution. We generated some amazing user stats, great revenue per user, and had a fun time working with real celebrities.

I’m currently working as a founder on a project that’s not quite ready to be revealed, but I’m very excited at its potential. Stay tuned!

And to think it all started with anthropomorphic pigs...

Best Regards,

Mickey Rossi