Strengths:
• broad range of creative and design talents; graphic design & fine arts
• illustration skills in both electronic and traditional media • have excellent creative and visual conceptualization knowledge
• an aptitude for quick creative thinking out of the box, offer a confident creative point of view, work collaboratively with other teams & VPs
• leadership qualties; encourage exellence among teammates • able to mentor others & delegate workload, while also hoping to inspire
• highly detail orientated, meticulous, reliable, open minded, easy going, kind, positive attitude, self-motivated with efficient organizational skills
• work well under tight deadlines to achieve optimal output within brand • always strive to achieve my best quality of work
• Love photography, great eye for composition, have lead product shoots
Amber Johnson
Graphic Designer & Artist
Objective:
Seeking a Permanent Full-Time Position at a reputable company as a senior Graphic Designer, Illustrator,
Art Director or related position where I can utilize my creative talents more as well as my design skills.
Education:
Graphic Design Diploma - 2000
University of the Fraser Valley
(On Deans list for top student, 1 of 2)
Fine Arts Diploma - 1997
Kwantlen College University
Software Knowledge:
Latest versions of Mac OS, Creative Suite: • Photoshop • InDesign • Illustrator • Acrobat • GarageBand • iMovie.
• Cue Print/Design • Procreate • Quark Express • Microsoft Word/Exel/Teams • Dream Weaver • Wix (Web)
• Pulse (Embroidery Program) • BV Essentials • Freehand • Basic After Effects • Interested in Maya/Unity
Work Experience:
Creative Category Team Lead & Sr. Print Production Artist (Graphic Designer) ~ Best Buy Canada/ Future Shop
Glenlyon Parkway, Burnaby, B.C. ~ Full Time 15 years – Employed October 24, 2005 - January 26, 2021.
• Team lead of Future Shop Team for 6 years and Team Lead for the Best Buy Team for 9 years
• In charge of 1-3 product categories, also maintained related brand guides for the Production Services Team
• Worked with a very tight-knit Team, as well as merchant & CMS teams on flyers, catalogues, ads & signage
• Designed large sized banners, wall murals, posters, signage, logos, splash pages for in house programs & clients
• Head Designer working on lengthy campaigns such as CSG Smart Learning Program, catalogues & magazines
• Had the creative freedom to illustrate all the Best Buy CHQ phonebook covers
• Implemented solutions for workflow & layouts by building InDesign libaries and “Best Practice” Guides
• Provided improved variations of ads when necessary to guarantee optimal satisfaction for clients & customers
• Lead sketch meetings, attended Executive Review & Marketing Review meetings with marketing teams
• Mentored new team members about layouts, brand standards & creative treatments to maintain consistency
• Delegated work to teammates that would best suite their skills and helped to motivate & inspire their best
• I was more like an art director, guiding teammates how to creatively improve their print advertisements
• Helped ship flyers by proofing, editing, doing price check with Pricing Team, french translation & PDFs
• Highly detail orientated in order to ensure the integrity of the most accurate final files & optimal layouts
Graphic Designer and Illustrator ~ Southern Sweet Bee, LLC.
Alabama, U.S.A. ~ Part Time – Freelance 2016 - 2020.
• Designed labels for honey & candles, social media ads, business cards
• Desgined signage of various sizes, from small card size to large billboards
• illustrated nature scenes for wood panels & cutting boards for CatScratch as well
• Hand drew hundreds of wildlife pieces, reworked for high contrast in Photoshop
• Worked in Adobe Creative Suite, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat
• illustrated bee characters for future book and full colour illustrations of wildlife for educational signs
Design Site Competitions & Freelance Design:
Design Sites ~ 2013 - 2018. Freelance Design ~ 2016 - 2021.
I participated in online design site competitions from 2013-2018, while also working full time at Best Buy/
Future Shop. I won the very first logo design competition I entered through 99Designs. I also competed through
Design Crowd & Crowd Spring where I won many competitions. It was a great way to improve my illustration skills.
Through my winnings, I picked up multiple clients, mainly in Alabama, U.S.A. where they took a great liking to my work.
This kept me quite busy with freelance design work onward from 2016 until early 2021.
Art Co-ordinator/ Graphic Designer ~ G & G Golf Company
#302-26730, Langley, B.C. ~ Full Time 5 months – Employed June 24, 2005 - October 21, 2005.
• Co-ordinated and prepped artwork for metal accessories, also digitized embroidery for products & clothing
• Associated with printing companies on a 32-page catalogue that I designed from top to bottom
• Arranged photo shoots, took hundreds of product shots and prepped them while also designing the catalogue
• Designed ads and single page flyers, colour co-ordinated thread colours for artwork
• Illustrated diagrams and package designs for new products, inspected final products to ensure quality work
• Took phone & email orders from other golf courses and various corporate companies from the U.S.A., Canada and China.
Senior Graphic Designer ~ A&B Sound
3434 Cornett Road, Vancouver, B.C. ~ Full Time 5 years – Employed August 2000 - June 2005.
• Key designer for entertainment in the advertising department where I managed many ads at once
• Illustrated all creative aspects of entertainment ads with complete creative freedom
• Designed ads, brochures, flyers, posters, stickers, certificates and many other print projects advertising CDs, DVDs and music artists,
as well as movie slides for Famous Players
• Designed ads for newspapers and magazines across Canada including: The Province, Vancouver Sun,
Georgia Straight, TV Week, Calgary Fast Forward, Winnipeg Uptown plus many others
• Communicated with music reps from major record companies (EMI, Universal, Sony etc.)
• Organized info, prepped images and text files via email, faxes, A&B merchants and the production manager
Interests:
Art, creative time; drawing & painting, music, writing, wood carving, photography, camping, sun, animals, exploring nature and tranquillity outdoors.
Resume of
Brown Belt - Black Belt Club
1997-2000, Sun Hang Do (MMA)
Highschool Diploma - 1993
Aldergrove Senior Secondary
(Recieved award for “Top Art Student”)