:: home :: :: about me :: :: services :: :: success :: :: methodology :: :: employers :: :: portfolio ::
Design48 is the showcase for my digital art.

- Marte Thompson

Design48 - Where Technology is an Art...

A Brief History of Marte

I am a professional artist and illustrator, with twenty years of computer graphics experience on all three computer platforms: Mac, PC, and VAX (unix). My digital media skills are highly developed in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Powerpoint, and ImageReady. I also handcode html and javascript, and work extensively with Cascading Stylesheets. I have many years of project management and art director experience, as well as years of teaching at both the college and corporate level.

I have worked for the software, defense, telecom, publishing, and videogame industries. In all of these, I have employed my technical, artistic, and language skillsets to create professional publication products, interactive CDROMs, videogames, educational software, and corporate websites.

I taught basic principles of Graphic Design (Typography and Layout) at San Jose City College for seven years, from 1973 to 1980, interfacing with students of every age and ethnic background, and at all skill levels. More recently (2005), I taught both Desktop Publishing (InDesign) and Illustration & Storyboarding at Silicon Valley College in south San Jose, CA.

Because of my background in teaching, I am often called upon to train junior engineers in digital art skills, as well as teach HTML and Javascript formatting.

In September of 1980 I was hired at Lockheed Corporation as a technical illustrator, then promoted to commercial artist and acted as assistant art coordinator in a team of five artists. Our average document consisted of thousands of pages of technical graphics and text, in both slide (Powerpoint) and print form.

In 1994, I was hired as a digital animator for SEGA of America by a former art director from Disney Studios. The 2D animation skills that I acquired in the videogame industry, I then applied in my work at The Learning Company (1996), and Computer Curriculum Corporation (1997), and now bring those valuable related skillsets to the web arena. I am expert in both raster (Photoshop) and vector (Illustrator and Flash) digital art. Examples of my animation art can be viewed on my portfolio website.

Click on the links in the banner above to see examples of my work.

In 1997, I created over 200 Adobe Illustrator drawings that were published in technical white papers, Powerpoint presentations, and online for the release of Oracle 8. I have also drawn a great many technical illustrations for Lockheed (1986-93) Loral (1995) and Northrop Grumman (1996).

Since 1999, I have been a fulltime webdesigner, bringing both my raster (pixel) and vector skillsets to the web. I handcode HTML and DHTML plus Javascript, and I am very familiar with Cascading Style Sheets. I prefer to handcode, but I can also use any of the WYSIWYG tools, such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage, and Homesite. I also like to design Flash sites.

I have been principal designer on several e-commerce websites, including an intranet portal for Oracle Corporation in Redwood Shores, CA. More recently, I redesigned and built the website for Peninsula Pops in Palo Alto. At their request, I trained the orchestra manager to write HTML and so maintain the site herself.

marte48@gmail.com