About Art

  • I support a successful and positive experience for the user
  • I support the success of stakeholder goals
  • I design with the larger user experience in mind

A successful user has a positive financial impact on a company. Empowering the success of users is not an easy task given the variables of designing for differing user objectives, methods of looking for information and multiple departments in a company all clamoring for prime web site exposure. Thankfully, difficult and possible are not mutually exclusive.

Below is a lot of text, if you want to learn more about what makes me tick, it's all yours. If not, here are two links to provide options to this page.

link to samples of work Art Zippel resume

Here is one more "out" before you dive into the abyss below. Click here to learn about my recent accomplishments.

From May 2002 to January 2010 (yes, 7 1/2 years at the same place) I have worked as the Creative Director and User Experience / Interaction Designer for a small non-profit organization called the National Fibromyalgia Association (NFA). One of the benefits of working for a small company (small in size of staff, but large in terms of wholly committed to their common task) is you wear many hats. I also periodically filled the roles of, Art Director and Designer (at one point I had an Art Director and Designer in my department). Additionally, I served as the company Webmaster keeping our multiple web sites up and running.

When I started in 2002, the NFA web site was a collection of 160 hand-coded pages from a variety of developers who donated their work. There were approximately 16,000 registered users scattered throughout a multitude of Excel spread sheets with varying categories of fields. The organization had started approximately 5 years earlier from humble roots in the founder’s condo. I’m sure this is not an uncommon beginning for a small entrepreneurial business or non-profit. It certainly was the ideal beginning for the NFA to become recognized as the leading patient advocacy organization representing a national population of 6-8 million individuals. The role of the NFA has been and will always be to “develop and execute programs dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with Fibromyalgia." I am very proud of my contribution in this area of healthcare.

In one of my early interviews I remember my answer to the question, “What do you like to do”? My answer was simple and to the point, “Solve challenges”. I am the eternal optimist. While growing up, I remember seeing Peace Corps commercials of the glass of water. I knew the glass was half full and I preferred it that way. I needed room in that glass to make my contribution.

I received a degree in graphic design and promptly went to work for an in-house advertising agency as an, Art Director, Graphic Designer and Photographer. Possibly I might have deduced early on that the wearing of many hats would suite me well with the creative challenges it offered along with my premature receding hairline. These were five years of learning the difference between school work and work, work. My position afforded me with real world experiences and with endless trips to the California desert and Sierra Nevada Mountains with my new found friend John Sexton who was later to become the assistant to Ansel Adams.

With my previous exposure to photography, the next 18 years saw me applying my desire to "solve challenges" as one of Orange County’s top Advertising Photographers. Working for most of Orange Counties top advertising agencies I was able to apply my analytical and logical approaches to creative image making to numerous companies such as, Yamaha, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Isuzu, Disneyland, Carl’s Jr., Western Digital, AST, American-McGaw, Edwards Laboratories, American Hospital Supply and on and on and on. And for such advertising and PR agencies as, Foote, Cone and Belding, Bozell and Jacobs, Burston/Marsteller, Cochran Chase Livingston, Salvati, Montgomery and Sakoda, and on and on and on.

With the advent of a new computer company called Apple, digital stock photography and Photoshop, I knew it was time to connect back with my roots by trading in my view cameras, strobes and Nikons for one of those Apple things. During the next five years of the emerging information superhighway I found my desire for capturing images replaced with capturing why people think the way they do with psychology. And I found my keen ability to solve challenges in a logical and analytical fashion applied to beta releases of software as I accepted the position of Creative Director for a software company as the lead user experience designer and information architect. It was during this time that I became familiar with the program Visio as a primary tool in the development of wire frames for Information Architecture (IA).

The next four years were a mix of building my consultant business and working with various firms who provided work for such firms as BMW, Coleman USA and Perception Kayaks. While I loved the diversity of those years I longed to build a brand and develop its growth. Thus, when I had a chance to become part of the National Fibromyalgia Association (NFA) my answer to the question of “what do you like to do and will you do it for us” was a simple, “I solve challenges and yes, I would love to do it for you”.

The seven years I spent with the NFA provided me with rich experiences for professional growth and opportunities to apply my expertise in areas as varied as being the technical and creative lead with branded and non-branded ventures with Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Forest Laboratories or riding a tandem bicycle with the founder of the NFA from San Francisco to Santa Monica. I also played integral roles in research programs across the United States and internationally, leveraging online user surveys that returned user participation percentages that far exceeded industry baselines. I was the lead Information Architect handling the responsibilities of task analysis, work flow, and navigation through the use of low-fidelity wire frames and high-fidelity functional prototypes.

During this time I was able to migrate the 160 page web site to an enterprise level CMS which has grown in size to over 2,400 pages rich in user information and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With my expertise in organic SEO the NFA web site is returned as the first listing on the first page of results for the keyword Fibromyalgia. I was successful in supporting a growth from 16,000 registered users to over 77,000 along with numerous campaigns to increase brand loyalty. One in particular was focused at increasing Facebook fans. At the beginning of this campaign we had 1,700 Facebook fans, within 8 weeks we added 11,000 new Facebook fans. My role was to serve as the lead technologist and Creative Director. In these capacities I realized that we could generate additional exposure to our Facebook page by including a tag line in the folio of our printed magazine next to the page number which said, “We’re on Facebook”. We also launched a targeted email campaign encouraging members to contact friends and family to sign-up as Facebook fans.

Do to the challenging conditions many businesses have found themselves in these days, I have had my role transition into one as a consultant for the NFA.

During what I hope is the end of this challenging financial time in the history of our nation I look forward to giving you the same answer, “I solve challenges, and yes, I want to do it for you”.