KYLE RATHJEN KYLE RATHJEN

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1 KR KYLE RATHJEN KYLE RATHJEN

2 COVER LETTER & RESUME Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. - Marianne Williamson It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Kyle Rathjen Graphic Designer / Photographer / Digital Artist kylerathjen@gmail.com HELLO, I am delighted to present to you my resume for the Graphic Designer position. Given the opportunity, I would make a profitable contribution to this company. I would like to find an enjoyable place to utilize all of my many skills as well as join a cooperative team to further succeed in our marketing efforts. Some necessary abilities a candidate for this position must have include exceptional communication and leadership skills, which allow for better customer relations and overall positive results. Through many of the everyday duties I have had over the past 6 years working as a Graphic Designer/ Photographer/Digital Artist, these skills have developed and thrived. Operating with a high volume of projects, deadlines, mediums and staff as well as organizing multiple designers and projects, both require communication and leadership. My dedication to succeeding in the workplace has taught me how to effectively produce results, manage my time, and solve problems. The talent and skill set a Graphic Designer has is essential to the success of their client or employer. The creative talent and knowledge of my field will make me a valuable part of this team. I have learned many things along my career path. I have found that always expanding, learning and experimenting are keys to success. You can not move forward with out taking that first initial step. I prode myself on my creative ability to always push my designs to the next level, and with this I am forced to stay current on all new trends, colors, software, techniques and products that are in the market. Honestly, this is what I love to do. I live, breathe, and sleep anything design related. Photography, Graphic Design, Fine Art, Advertising, Web Design, Logos, etc...are all apart of me and my everyday funtion. I appreciate the time you take to review my application and look forward to future discussions concerning this position. KR

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4 ABOUT ME KR I have been a Graphic Designer for 6 years. In my employment history as an artist I have worked for a local newspaper designing advertisement pages for the Auto Department and after 6 months I was promoted to Markeing Director where I managed multiple designers, proofed their designs/ads for print and designed in house advertising along with the Auto ads I continued to do. I then worked for an industry leading home decor company (DCWV) designing vinyl lettering, framed art, packaging, press ready, typography, painting, illustrating, photography, advertising, marketing, product development and working with the online team. I was the second designer to start on this team and helped build DCWV Home after 3 years into what it is today. I am currently working for GlyMed Plus as a Graphic Designer, designing advertisements, catalogs, flyers, manuals, web design, CMS updates, web banners, product packaging and marketing materials. I am thankful to have worked in all of these areas of design. It allowed me to learn different aspects of Graphic Design and how it is incorporated in different areas of business as well as how it is seen by others. With my continuing growth in Graphic Design my styles will evolve and will allow me to present a larger and more diverse portfolio. I am profcient in Adobe CS3 through CS6, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Lightroom, Acrobat, Photography, RAW, Canon, Nikon and some experience in Flash and Dreamweaver. I am always willing and wanting to learn more to further my career as a Graphic Designer. I love taking pictures. My personal favorite are portraits. They are always so much fun with great results. Ive found that in every situation there is an award winning photo, you just have to find it, and the hunt for that perfect photo is what drives me to better myself. I kind of fell into photography by accident. One of the companies I use to work for needed someone to take product pictures for the catalogs. So I voluntereed and started using the ancient Nikon D100 for a little while until I learned what I was doing. When that happened, I fell in love with Photography. It was hard for me to not want to learn everything I could and go out to try new techniques. I now retired the Nikon D100 and went out and bought a Canon EOS 7D. I LOVE IT! The capabilities of that camera are amazing! There is really nothing that I can t do with that camera. I m always looking for new and exciting styles, ideas and designs. If you have any ideas, questions or need some freelance work done, let me know. Send me an , text or call me. THANKS! Kyle Rathjen

5 I have designed multiple websites. The examples shown above are 4 home pages designed for various companies with varying styles, colors, themes and purposes. I am currently expanding my web design skills by retaining more freelance clients with a redesign in mind or a brand new site all together. In my 6 years of designing I have mainly focused on the visual side of graphic and web design. I have very little coding experience and knowledge. I have noticed the need to expand this area of my craft and have been working on this weakness of mine to further become a strength, much like I have done throughout my career with other aspects of design. I look forward to the challenge and realize what a great benefit it will be, however, I do have some expereince with excisting CMS and HTML codes. I can go through excisting code and find, replace or fix a problem, image, banner, etc... WEB DESIGN

6 I have designed numerous materials for the local highschool in my area, Timpanogos. In recent years I have designed a new logo for the highschool which will soon be placed on their basketball court, I have redesigned their sport calendars, and have also voluntered my time and service to the senior athletes. to match the theme of their particular sport. Then, on their senior night their coach presents that student to their school with their parents and hands them their Senior Gift which is their sport poster mounted on foam core or chip board which they can have for their memories of their time at Timpanogos High School. As a senior athlete in highschool they have a Senior Night which is their last home game of the highschool career in whatever sport they are involved in. I then invite all senior athletes to get their picture taken in the studio and then placed in a background that I designed TIMPANOGOS HIGH SCHOOL

7 These examples were for an oil company (McAnally Wilkins, Inc.) out in Texas. I was doing a freelance project for them that I was contracted for. It included logo design and a brochure cover for their sales manual. These are the final products of those designs. The logos had many other examples that I came up with, including a wide range of styles and typography solutions, but they ended up going with the more photoreal look with the dirty, grungy texture over the top (my personal favorite as well. The Brochure cover was a particular fun piece to work on. I was given mulitple (point and shoot camera phone) pictures that I clipped out, edited and incorporated into the design and gave it a very Movie Poster look that they were looking for. MCANALLY WILKINS, INC. (OIL INDUSTRY)

8 Rampage is a movie that I stumbled across one night while looking through Netflix. I saw the cover of the movie and noticed their glass explosion effect they had around their male model holding an aresnal of weapons. I started to pick apart how they succesfully attempted this effect without physically putting the model into an explosion and taking high resolution, fast frame photography of the event. So I opened up photoshop and messed around with effects, resources, textures, pictures, etc...until I had successfully figured out a way to duplicate the effect. It was a great learning experience and opened my eyes to the limitless potential I have as a designer and digital artist. I love picking apart other pieces of art and figuring out how they built it. Great learning tool. MOVIE POSTER

9 Ha Ha Ha...This was a very fun day! This was Halloween at DCWV. Employees were greatly encouraged to dress up during the Halloween festivites at work. I saw all the great costumes we had throughout the company and decided to to a photoshoot of each one individually, edit, and incorpoarte graphics to get the overall theme of their costume. We then used these photos for the judging contest at the end of the day (company wide) through an survery. There are many, many more examples. Most are really funny and very well crafted from their owners. I can t take all the credit. HALLOWEEN PHOTOGRAPHY

10 These two pieces are of a collection currently being sold in Target in the Home Decor section under Die Cuts With A View. I created these during my employment with Die Cuts With A View. Both of these two designs are being produced in Peel & Stick and on Canvas. I incoprated many mediums into these designs. I brought in the drawing tablet to draw elements, photos for the texture and realism effect, Adobe Illustrator for the vectors, and Adobe Photoshop to finalize and wrap it all together. I actually have the one on the left printed on canvas, and wrapped around a 2 thick wood frame and hung on my wall at home. HOME DECOR (WINE SERIES ON CANVAS)

11 Digital Illustrations are a big part of most companies products and or displaying product/packaging before actually investing thousands into a packaging idea without seeing what the end product will look like. Being able to add the personal touch of digital illustration to an add all the way up to illustrating a complete children s book is a great asset for any client or company. I have done digital illutrations for both actual products to sell as well as displaying a new packgaing idea to clients. I feel that this skill is greatly neccessary and adds a sense of personalization to each and every project done. DIGITAL ILLUSTRATIONS

12 I currently work for GlyMed Plus as their Senior Graphic Designer. I have worked for GlyMed Plus since March of I have been responsible for everything visual coming out of this company. Anything from product packaging artwork to full page magazine advertisements and now including any and all web and online material. It has been a very fun and creative place to work. I have designed and created numerous new lines, new looks, new logos, manuals, brochures, web banners, expensive advertisements and even did product photography. I recently have been put in charge of updating and maintaing the website through CMS controls using HTML codes, tables, and links. GLYMED PLUS (PROFESSIONAL SKIN CARE)

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14 Photo Montage is a big part of what I do as a Graphic Designer. I felt like this subject needed its own category due to how much I incorpoarte this style into my designs. I usually take numerous photos, resources, vectors, textures, lighting, shading, hand drawn elements and self photographed images to create these montages. The ones above are montages I did for friends, family and work. I feel it is very challenging and rewarding to start with different images/elements and create one piece of art that gets the WOW reaction. That WOW reaction is what drives me to do what I do and make my artwork, skills, and knowledge better and more extensive. PHOTO MONTAGE

15 Advertising... What more can I say? I love advertising. I love everything about it. From reseraching other great designers and their work, seeing their styles, their effects, their colors and always trying to do the next best thing...is such a great challenge for designers everyday. I ll constantly just randomly pick a product and make and advertisement for that company in their style they already have or in a completly different look just to give myself practice and experience dealing with the constant change of our media. ADVERTISING (MISC. PRODUCTS)

16 Logos are one of the many key essential componets to any company or client. Without a well designed logo they may never get the opportunity to offer their services of their company. I have seen many, many poorly designed logos as well as eye opening logos that are just pure genius. I strive for the latter. I try to stay away from the normal clip-art logo and do something different that most companies haven t ever seen before. I feel that companies need to stand out from the crowd (in a good way) in order to seperate themselves from the masses... A well designed and creative logo is a great place to start. LOGOS (VARIOUS COMPANIES)

17 Photography...photography is a big part of who I am and what I do in my spare time. I not only do photography to help my graphic design but I love, love, love nature, landscape and abstract photography. I never fully understood the meaning behind A picture is worth a thousand words until I got behind the camera and felt the realitionship first hand. There are so many great photographers out there today and they all have their own style and way about doing things. I love it! There is no right or wrong with photography, just pure art. However, there are certain techinques that produce better images, but to each his own...right? PHOTOGRAPHY (NATURE)

18 Portrait Photography is by far my favorite kind of photography. You can capture so much personality in someones face, eyes, expression, clothes, body language...just about anything. Portraits really have a way with speaking to people and for the most part they help record a specific time in someones life. I have years of experience with portrait photography, in and out of the studio. I take numerous family, senior, bridals, weddings, children, big groups, small groups, pretty much any kind of photography and feel very confident in making important decision regarding the pictures outcome. This is just something that I love to do, and is one of my favorite hobbies as well. PHOTOGRAPHY (PORTRAITS)

19 CONCLUSION Kyle Rathjen Graphic Designer / Photographer / Digital Artist kylerathjen@gmail.com THANK YOU, Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share my portfolio with you. I hope you can see the passion I have for my craft. I take this very seriously and I am always looking to better myself through my artwork. I have tried to display my many talents in the field of Graphic Design and feel that my prized attribute is my creativity. I ve always used my creativity to spring me forward and let it guide me through the designs. I ve always been told its easier to teach someone the tools and how to use them then it is to teach someone to be creative. It is something you are born with and develop in life. Again, Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to hearing from you. Kyle Rathjen KR I can honestly say that I love my job. I love everything about this career and wouldn t choose anything else to do with my time. Graphic Design is all around us, being able to influence the media with my creations is such a wonderful gift. Please if you have any questions, comments or concerns, just contact me and I will gladly answer those for you.