Jim Santo   CLIENTS

My involvement with the Internet began in June 1994 when I became the first content provider to Sonicnet, then a text-only BBS. "Demo Universe" was an online version of the "Demorandum" column on unsigned bands, published by Alternative Press magazine. A year later, I launched Demo Universe on the World Wide Web. Praised by critics and named on numerous "best of web" lists, it's still among the largest searchable archives of self-released music reviews.

Demo Universe led quickly to freelance work from then-start-up Agency.com, which hired me as a designer for Urban Desires; and Total New York, for which I produced several multimedia profiles of unsigned NYC bands. During this time I was still pursuing a career in journalism, employed by San Francisco-based Miller Freeman Inc. While serving as managing editor for an MFI travel publication, I designed, developed and maintained a weekly webzine, Vacation Travel News.

I leapt into new media full-time in November 1997 when I became managing editor for Word.com, the award-winning literature and culture site. My responsibilities at Word included project management, invoicing and payroll, reviewing unsolicited manuscripts and overseeing Word's chat room.

At that time Word was in a bad way with its parent company, so after three months I hopped over to The Hub, a pop-culture webzine co-owned by America Online and New Line Cinemas, where I was solely responsible for HTML production and updates. At first it seemed a great move -- Word was shut down by its parent the day I started at The Hub -- but within three weeks AOL bought out New Line and shut down The Hub.

In the spring of 1998, I co-founded Allegra Media LLC in partnership with Carole Filangieri, who had built a successful freelance business with clients including Bolt.com, Lycos Inc., CMP Media, Conde Nast's Swoon.com and Yoyodyne. Over the next two years, Carole and I produced work for a high-profile roster of clients including Berlitz Languages Inc., Children's Television Workshop, GolfServ, Hertz Corp., React.com and Trump Casino Hotels and Resorts. At the same time, I held a part-time position as web manager for Brooklyn Botanic Garden, overseeing the design and development of a 2,000-plus-page site.

Among my freelance clients in 1999 was Zwirl.com, a developer of distributed e-commerce solutions for content and affinity sites. In April 2000, I joined Zwirl as user interface director, in which capacity I oversaw a radical repositioning and redesign of the product.

Since February 2001, I have been creative director for mckinseyquarterly.com, an on-line journal of business and economics published by McKinsey & Company.

 

SKILLS
HTML
DHTML
Javascript
Copy Writing
Graphic Design
Site Architecture
Project Management
Usability Engineering
PROGRAMS
Anarchie
BBEdit
Excel
Fetch
FileMaker
Fireworks
Homesite
Illustrator
ImageReady
Peak
Photoshop
ProTools
Quark Xpress
RealProducer
Telnet
DEVELOPMENT PLATFORMS
ASP
Cold Fusion
Lasso
Mason
Perl
SSI
StoryServer
Unix