resume (.doc) | resume (.pdf) | print page | close window


Contact

Joe Edakkunnathu
pronounced (ed·uh·kah·nah·thu)

1001 S. Plymouth Court Unit B, Chicago, IL
cell: 630.258.0494
home: 312.566.0129
joe@thesoulwithin.com
www.thesoulwithin.com

Work History

07 - Sapient

Creative Design Manager // March '07 to Oct. '07

 

06 - Monster Worldwide (TMP - Advertising & Communications)

 

Senior Interactive Art Director // Dec. '01 to March '07

 

TMP Worldwide is the largest recruitment advertising agency in the world and is the parent company for Monster.com. I was brought in to help grow the level of interactive talent and help the department grow in terms of its interactive capabilities since the department initially focused on print media for its clients. Since then, I have had the opportunity to help the department become more efficient in their creative processes as well as serve as an interactive mentor for other creatives. As the resident new media expert, I often serve as a consultant for developing high-level interactive ideas for new business pitches. Similarly in that role, I helped lead an initiative to build websites that comply with SEO best practices within several of the company's development centers nationwide. I was instrumental in helping building SEO as a product offering in-house as it was previously an outsourced solution. As a creative, I helped develop award-winning creative for a variety of Fortune 500 clients across various media such as print, trade show material, interactive CD-ROMs, custom job postings, e-mail campaigns and websites.

Selected client list: Deloitte, US Cellular, National City, Rush Medical Center and Schlumberger

 
 

05 - Circle Point Digital, LLC

 

Partner/Creative Director // May '04 to Feb '06

 

Started as a side project, Circle Point Digital was created as an online experiment on how to build a creative business from the ground up - electronically. My partner and I developed our entire business process from start to finish, from how a request comes in, to assigning resources, and managing the project through a modified web-based project management tool called Copper, all the way down to billing and receivables. My responsibility was primarily as creative director and project manager as well as creative recruitment. We sourced talent internationally including Argentina, Philippines, India and Canada as both designers and programmers in our virtual company. We managed our clients through our project management tool, my partner did the client facing work and I was to ensure creative quality of our services from concept to completion from our international sub-contractors.

Selected client list: Discover, Narra Restaurant, Pagepanties.com, Haute Auto

 
 

04 - theSOULwithin, Inc

 

Freelance Interactive Art Director // Sep. '01 to Present

 

theSOULwithin is my freelance entity that I have dabbled with off and on over the years. I mainly focus on Chicago based companies doing a variety of website design or Flash work. Serving as a creative consultant, I often help small businesses develop their own unique brand and help them look much larger. Learning about how many types of businesses work has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of designing. It's trying to solve a business issue through a design solution that has been most interesting part of the process for me.

Selected client list: Soldier Field Stadium, Motorola, and Michael Bradley of the 76ers

 
 

03 - divine, inc. (USWeb/CKS > marchFIRST > divine interventures)

 

Art Director // Aug. '99 to Sep. '01

 

One of the best experiences of my life was being in the industry before, during and after the whole dot com bubble. At the time I joined USWeb/CKS, they had the largest interactive development revenue of anyone in the world, and when they merged with Chicago-based tech firm, Whittman-Hart to form marchFIRST, we became the largest internet consultancy in the world at over 10,000 employees worldwide.

Several projects that I worked on ran in excess of $20 million. Our project teams consisted of designers, information architects, account executives, project managers, content strategists, writers, brand specialists and front/back-end. Personally, I managed several entry-level designers for day-to-day responsibilities for projects as well served as their liaison to the other disciplines to help manage the project work flow as well as serve as lead art director. Once the downturn, began, so did the layoffs. I survived several rounds of layoffs, even managed to hang-on for a bit while remaining assets were sold to Chicago based venture capital firm, divine interventures. Some highlights from my time at marchFIRST was helping Harley-Davidson bring their store online for the first time and help build the first-ever web-based shopping cart system for a telecom provider in Ohio, CoreComm.

Selected client list: McDonald's, Harley-Davidson, Sony, Cummins and CoreComm

 
 

02 - DDB Digital (currently known as Tribal DDB)

 

Web Designer/Art Director // Feb. '98 to Aug. '99

 

Working at DDB exposed me to my first experience of developing interactive work for some of the most well known brands, including the opportunity to both design and build Budweiser.com in 1998. We often strategized with the "offline" account teams to create cohesive brand experience within the online space, right when internet advertising was taking off.

Selected client list: Budweiser, State Farm, Armor All, Van Kampen Funds, Clorox and Salon Selectives

 
 

01 - Morningstar.com

 

Web Designer/Front-end Programmer // Prior 6 mo. internship > May '97 to Jan. '98

 

Morningstar is a leader in the financial world as its "star" rating system is the industry stand for rating mutual funds ratings. In the early 90's they moved their services online and included editorial content as well as stock and fund screening interfaces which I helped design. This was where I got my first taste of information design, a challenge on how best to display complex information as well as a large amount of content. Other duties included HTML programming and QA as well as complimentary imagery for the site's editorial content which I coordinated with their in-house design department.

The Morningstar Internship program was a coveted one as legendary graphic designer, Paul Rand, created the company's corporate identity. His protégé, and Design Professor at UIC, was the reigning design consultant. I was the only one of my graduating class with an online portfolio and became the first student to be accepted into the dot com version of this program.

 

Skills

Conceptual thinking for how design and technology can impact an interactive experience, Art direction, web/CD-Rom based interaction and information design, corporate branding, Flash animation, organic search engine optimization, print design, basic audio and video editing


Applications

Photoshop, Illustrator, ImageReady, Indesign, Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, BBEdit, QuarkXpress, Acrobat Pro, QuickTime Pro, Cleaner (video), Squeeze (video), Peak LE (audio), Web Position Gold, MS Office


Technologies

HTML, CSS, basic Actionscript, understanding of dynamically driven content


Education

(BFA) Bachelors of Fine Arts in Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Graduated in December 1997


Affiliations

Art Director's Club
American Marketing Association


Awards

Employment Management Assoc. Creative Excellence Awards (EMA) - 2003, 2004, 2005


Interests

Gadgets, Technology, Knowledge, Web 2.0, Cooking, Traveling


resume (.doc) | resume (.pdf) | print page | close window