Front-End Design and UX

Mike O'Connell

Crafting web wonders.
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About

Hello! I'm Mike O'Connell a seasoned Front-End UX Designer with over ten years of experience in various aspects of online and offline marketing creative, web-based communications, and front-end projects. Currently, I'm responsible for bringing creative ideas to life on Americares websites. My passion lies in delivering compelling and effective solutions for each project, and I constantly seek inspiration from the natural world as a true multipotentialite at heart.

I'm married to a snappy copywriter and a dad to two (at times) wonderful kids. I live in Connecticut .

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Front-End Designer

I write HTML, CSS, PHP, and JS with the intent to create and function humanistically. Its not all just about delightful experiences and microinteractions, but driving all internal web product roadmaps to solve long-standing issues, shifting priorities and future-proofing against those pesky black swans.

Creative Direction

I provide big-picture visual solutions for branding and shaping perceptions of persons, places and things. Thanks to previous roles in print (i.e. magazine, poster, signage) and digital marketing, I can implement strategy alongside generation of icons, illustrations, patterns. Graphic design is my origin story.

UX / Information Architecture

Compositional hierarchy, UX prototyping and design systems. I focus on Atomic design systems and building a visual language to bring it all to life (and maintain order!). I aim to strike the perfect balance between aesthetics and functionality, ultimately delivering on an experience that bring joy and value to the lives of users.



Work

From the initial brand strategy all the way to design, art direction, code development, and project deployment, I am involved in various aspects of the creative process. Here are some highlights:

Americares Web Presence

Encompassing several sites, site underwent a replatforming and complete rebrand where I lead design and development on components, interactions, peformance and code throughout. Migrated thousands of content partials into new Episerver CMS. Rebranded ecommerce platform for consistency.
  • Website
  • E-Commerce
  • Balsamiq

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Icarus Program Branding

Client program and technology required strict branding guidelines for a grant proposal. (Freelance Client, undisclosed)
  • Illustrator
  • Photoshop

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Spirit of Humanity Awards

Humanitarian Awards program for Americares India required a rebrand to fit with our corporate brand guidelines. Created all new assets and guidebook.
  • Illustrator
  • Photoshop
  • Indesign

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Americares FIT Field Tool

UI Interface Concept for a multi-purpose Smartwatch-based need for discrete supply ordering, alert system and note tracking in an emergency humanitarian aid setting.
  • Adobe XD

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Giving Tuesday Campaign

Fundraising campaign with specific goal of raising funds and micro-grants for clinics affected by Hurricane Matthew during Giving Tuesday.
  • Display Network
  • Illustrator
  • Website

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Battle with a Paddle

Yearly Fundraising Event for local donors. Created all branding, signage, art direction and website
  • Illustrator
  • Indesign
  • Website
  • Balsamiq

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Program Conference Materials

Created a series of large format prints and trade materials to supplement the mobile booth displays used for a series of nonprofit and pharmaceutical shows.
  • Photoshop
  • Indesign

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Holiday Prospect Email

Lead design and funnel for email campaign series targetting inactive donors. Due diligence on inbox placement, careful segmentation, test variations and matched the curated content to create a lift of 300% throughout send timing.
  • Photoshop
  • HTML/CSS
  • Luminate Online

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Commissioned Print

Freelance Illustration for a client's beloved pets. Used Illustrator to allow for scalable prints.
  • Illustrator

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Ebola Crisis Advocacy Site

Standalone site used as landing page for a series of ad spends and outreach. Content revolved around advocacy, support for country clinics, and fundraising.
  • Website
  • Illustrator

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Leadership Council Email

Lead design and funnel for email campaign series targetting constituents in the New York City Metro area. Outreach using this email extended past our intended goal of 100 guests, and forwarding-to-friends nearly surpassed original prospects listings.
  • Photoshop
  • HTML/CSS
  • Luminate Online

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Americares Website 2012

Full scale reconstruction of the Americares website following a refresh of the brand. Integrated cli pipelines to leverage quicker iterative sprints. Also emphasized responsive design features. Replaced in 2016 (see above).
  • Website
  • Photoshop
  • Luminate Online
  • Bootstrap
  • SASS

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Haiti Earthquake Response Infographic

Conveying complex information can be a daunting task. I led effort in researching our reports to build a vector-based infographic. Realizing the impact of our data can demonstrate efficacy in our relief efforts, I sought to transform our data into a captivating story of the size of engagement and scope of need within those efforts.
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Photoshop

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Book Illustration

A local author sought a series of scalable illustrations (cover and pages) for her children's book manuscript.
  • Illustrator

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History of Golf: South Carolina

During my time at LINKS Magazine I created bi-monthly spreads to encompass golf topics and advertorial content. This was one of my favorites.
  • Illustrator
  • Quark Xpress

Uses

These are a few of my favorite things (for work, of course)


  • Sublime Text V2 is my Ride-or-Die. Something I've been using the past several years and continue to despite offerings from VS Code and others.
  • Firefox Developer is my browser of choice. I use Brave, Opera, Dolphin and Chrome on occasion.
  • Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and XD are also key tools for me when designing anything. Figma is something I'm actively learning to leverage against XD.
  • Prefer Flywheel Local for localhost, WinSCP for FTP, and Windows Powershell. Windows 10 over Windows 11.
  • Trello and Slack for workflow processes, although familiar with JIRA, Basecamp, MS Teams and Smartsheet due to workplace siloing. Kanban is the only way out of this mess.
  • I run an upgraded and maxxed out ASUS Vivobook. Logitech mice, webcam, and keyboard only.
  • I run a Synology NAS DS218 with dual 4TB Seagate Ironwolf HDDs to keep everything backed up and remembered by all. Macrium syncs things up. Headphones/mic a must for all my Zoom calls. I use both Razer and LucidSound gaming headsets, whichever one hasn't being stolen by the kids at the time of need.
  • My Desk is an L-shaped hack: 5' wood butcher block tabletop mounted to a metal storage locker. Its ugly, but its cheap. On top of that is my VariDesk.
  • I'm in the process of DeGoogling (link) and have been Amazon free for 6 years! I suggest you try doing the same. Support your local businesses.

Always Available for freelancing

  • Location:

    Naugatuck, Connecticut

  • Email:

    moconnelldesign@gmail.com

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