Hi! Welcome to the online home of Bernadette Smith—designer, developer, marketer, manifesting generator, and still-aspiring entrepreneur.

Biography

 

A life’s work of embracing both the creative and the quantitative, balancing leadership and learning in all my personal and professional endeavors.

I have spent my entire adult life—and most of my (loner) childhood—engrossed in design and the impact it has on the way we communicate and connect with each other. As a somewhat free-spirited (awkward) child—I found sanctuary in the online world, and a freedom of expression through color, typography and layout.

In high school, I founded a Wu-Tang fan club on GeoCities, establishing the site as a preeminent social network that attracted hundreds of monthly visitors. I quickly became enamored with all things design and development on the (then new) medium. The site was eventually abandoned as my interest in Wu-Tang waned (along with the shutting down of GeoCities), but a passion for online community and design remained. Twenty years, dozens of projects, and several ‘lessons learned’ later, I’m still as obsessed as ever.

While pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in—you guessed it—Graphic Design, I was working full-time as a marketing coordinator at a Seattle-based architecture firm, where I designed the company’s brand guide and marketing collateral, and got to experience firsthand how a deliberate and consistent brand can directly impact the customer experience and overall revenue. This is also where I fell in love with my next obsession—branding.

Most recently, I spent nine years at DPR Construction, a global construction company based in California. As an early employee in the Austin, Texas office (the headcount grew 5x during my tenure), I played a significant role in building a $350M operation to a $1B region (literally from the ground up), and growing the regional marketing team from one to five professionals across three offices.

I currently reside in Seattle and own and operate my own branding + web design company (finally!). I have a genuine appreciation for great design, which plays a major role in every facet of my life, bordering on obsessive (hence the name of my company, Swatch Junkie). I also volunteer with several non-profit organizations; mostly because I want to be a good human and doing this allows me to use my technical skills to contribute to a good cause, which is incredibly rewarding.

Expertise

 

With 15+ years of hands-on experience, I’ve learned and embraced modern design + marketing through a continual loop of trial and error of almost every ‘technique’ imaginable, yielding a diverse skillset that touches on most every function. This is a partial list.

Resume
Portfolio
  • Brand Identity
  • Graphic Design
  • Editorial Design
  • Inbound Marketing
  • Content Strategy
  • Business Development/Sales
  • Community Outreach
  • Website Design & Development
  • Wireframing & Prototyping
  • Visual (UI/UX) Design
  • Copywriting (Ad, Web & Proposal)
  • Email Marketing
  • SEO

Technical Skills

  • UI / UX (Adobe XD, Figma) 80% 80%
  • Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) 90% 90%
  • Front-End Development (HTML, CSS & JS) 70% 70%
  • WordPress 85% 85%
  • Microsoft Office 365 / G Suite 90% 90%
  • Project Management (Trello, Wrike, Slack) 90% 90%

Contact

 

Let’s talk. Tell me something about yourself. I’ll start: I love learning about front-end development & I’m super into astrology, tarot and crystals. Ok, your turn…

15 + 2 =

Not in the mood to fill out a form? You can write to hi.swatchjunkie@gmail.com.

© 2021 Bernadette Smith. All Rights Reserved.