Cat's Eye Design: Web Design, Logos, Brochures, Business Cards

Cat's Eye Design looks forward to working with you on any of your large or small projects.

Bethany E. Sikaras

Skills Summary

Extensive experience in web development, graphic design, and quality assurance. Work includes the concept, design, redesign, content publication, testing, and maintenance of web sites for various Government and private industry customers.

Software: BBEdit, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Illustrator, Fetch, PVCS Tracker, CVS, Microsoft Office

Web coding: HTML, XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, XML, JSP, Java

Platforms/Web Servers: Mac OS X, Unix, Windows XP, Apache, Tomcat

Guidelines: Yale Style Manual, W3C, and Section 508 compliance

View my Portfolio

Work Experience

Owner/Creative Designer, Cat's Eye Design 2004 to Present
Provide web site and graphic design for businesses and organizations that include the following:
  • Design and creation of original templates that reflect the customer's business focus.
  • Design and creation of original line art images, including logos.
  • Working closely with customers from inception through completion of web site creation in order to ensure the customer's goals for their site.
  • Adherence to established web standards and guidelines, as well as incorporating search engine optimization to provide better traffic flow to the customer's site.
Web Publishing Manager/Designer, Brainbench, Inc. 2000 to 2004
Responsibilities/accomplishments include the following:
  • Provided design, development, project estimates, and quality assurance for the Brainbench web site and multiple co-branded customer sites.
  • Created templates and recoded pages from JSP to XML, an instrumental part of Brainbench's first site redesign.
  • Worked closely with Java developers and Product Managers in the design and development of software.
  • Co-developed the Publishing Standards Guide for internal and external partners providing content for the Brainbench site.
  • Consolidated, updated, and developed a consistent structure for test cases used for software deployments.
  • Established a project checklist to ensure external customer sites contained customized content.
  • Participated in the Change Control Board that oversaw change requests for the Brainbench site as well as customer accounts.
D/SIDDOMS, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) 1992 to 2000
Quality Assurance Anlayst. From 1996 to 2000, served as a quality assurance analyst for the World Wide Web team, a part of the Integrated Infrastructure Services under the EDS D/SIDDOMS contract. Customers have included the Department of Veterans Affairs, Patient Administration and Biostatistics Activity, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Defense as the point of contact to the TRICARE Management Activity Web content coordinator for the Military Health System web site. Responsibilities in this role were as follows:
  • Lead the production team as well as served as a point of contact for Government personnel and coordinator of all documentation that was published to the Web.
  • Provided leadership, design, and technical guidance to the production staff enabling them to provide World Wide Web (WWW) services.
  • Confirmed that documents were correctly HTML coded in order to be placed on the Web and that Web page layout and design conform to the customer's expectations.
  • Ensured that all pages were coded for accessibility to all users of the Web site.
  • Trained military personnel in HTML coding and development of Web pages.
Graphic Designer. From 1992 to 1996 was part of the Editing and Graphics Center. In this role, responsibilities included:
  • Design, layout, and scanning of business graphics and artwork.
  • Participated in a Document Process Improvement (DPI) working group providing direction to the EDS D/SIDDOMS teams in implementing document development processes that are defined and repeatable.
  • Commanded excellent organizational and facilitation skills when developing documents, as well as document layout and pagination, incorporating GPO style.
  • Interacted with multifunctional businesses.
  • Able to quickly interpret, activate, and troubleshoot software, work under tight deadlines and interact with several levels of business.
  • Established guidelines for the format and content of slide presentations and developed document templates that conform to a Department of Defense military standard.
Freelance Graphic Designer, Mac Temps/BOSS Services 1991 to 1992
As a freelance graphic designer, provided support to various Government and private companies on a temporary basis.
Graphic Designer, Corporate Response Group 1988 to 1991
As a graphic designer, responsibilities included the following:
  • Created all slide presentations, graphic representations in reports and proposals
  • Coordinated a five-day crisis management training course taught to senior foreign officials through the U.S. Department of State.
  • Guaranteed quality by working closely with writers and presenters on all projects.
  • Manipulated clip art, original artist renderings and cartoons.

Education

B.A., Communication Arts, 1987, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA

REFERENCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST


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