As an independent designer with her own freelance business, Melissa has spent the last two decades doing a broad range of work including brand identities, traditional marketing materials, social media elements and even truck design. Her philosophy is that one simple IDEA that can be communicated across all delivery mechanisms. Her skills includes brand concepting, identity development, creative direction, digital advertising, storyboards, design standards, social media content, video, corporate collateral, direct mail, point of purchase displays, event marketing materials, packaging, editorial design, project management, digital production, and print production. Melissa is an expert in Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and the InCopy editing process.

Recent highlights:

Harmon Brands

As Harmon Brand’s lead designer, Melissa has developed unique product identities, packaging and sales materials for this fast growing, emerging leader in the CBD space.

Ronald McDonald House Charities

The recent social media campaign for RMHC’s Season of Giving saw a 37% increase in donations, the biggest jump in giving on record. The campaign included short form video, banner ads, email marketing and multi-channel content.

Clarity Partners

Tasked with streamlining the budget reporting process for clients including Cook County, The City of Chicago, and The Cook County Forest Preserve, Clarity engaged Melissa in developing a batch process for financial reports. The budget books contained over 1,300 pages for Cook County alone. She designed the process and also wrote and conducted end-user training on the InDesign/InCopy Editing workflow.

Formerly Melissa served as Vice President and Creative Director at Gennera Knab and Company, where she lead a team of 8 creatives. Work spanned the gamut at this small creative lab. United Airlines was Melissa’s primary account where she lead the launch of the 777 aircraft in partnership with Boeing. Corporate collateral produced for the launch included brochures, invitations, pins and a logo that was applied to the aircraft itself. She’s also been at the creative department at Hill and Knowlton partnering with the Public Relations team to produce annual reports, logos, promotional materials for a range of fortune 500 clients.