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Virginia Van Vynckt

Objective

Using my web development, communication and marketing skills to help your company increase online sales.

Work experience

Web development and design, 2000-present

Proprietor of V3 Graphics, a Web development and consulting firm. Before late 2004, worked primarily on contract basis for FutureThru Group, Inc., a Web development company specializing in database-driven (ASP) sites with built-in content management. Clients have reported significant increases in site traffic and sales after my redesigns of their sites.

Duties include:
  • Client consultation (on both website design and sales strategies)
  • Site setup, design, maintenance and troubleshooting
  • Graphic design
  • Information design
  • HTML, PHP, ASP and CSS coding
  • Training clients in content-management software.

Proprietor/Publisher, Snowcap Press (Longmont, CO), 1998-2002

Published two books, Our Own: Adopting and Parenting the Older Child, by Trish Maskew; and Healthy Grilling, by Barbara Grunes. Former is highly acclaimed in the adoption community and has sold more than 6,000 copies.

Duties included:
  • Developmental and copy editing
  • Project management
  • Page layout and design
  • Print buying
  • Marketing, promotion, sales.

Cookbook author, 1995-2001

Author/co-author of seven food-related books: All-American Vegetarian (Holt, 1995), All-American Waves of Grain (Holt, 1996), The Great Big Cookie Book (Prima, 1996), Dictionary of Healthful Food Terms (Barron's, 1997), Feed Your Kids Right the Lazy Way (Alpha/Macmillan, 1998), Complete Idiot's Guide to Grilling (Alpha/Macmillan, 1999) and Wok Every Day (Chronicle, 2003).

Chicago Sun-Times, 1977-1994 (500,000+-circulation daily newspaper)

Food/nutrition reporter (1986-1994)

Was part of a four-person team that helped make the Food section one of the Sun-Times' most popular and profitable features sections.

Features copy desk chief (1983-1986)

Supervised a staff of 13. In addition to copy editing duties, duties included:
  • Devising copy editing tests for job applicants
  • Conducting job performance reviews
  • Acting as interpreter and arbiter of copy style for the Features department.

Copy editor (1977-1983)

Duties included:
  • Editing content and writing headlines in various genres (news, food, books, travel)
  • Designing and laying out interior pages for features sections
  • Overseeing production
  • Working with section designers, artists and photographers to develop and implement cover concepts.

 

Skills

Proficient on both PC and Mac platforms.

Considerable hands-on experience with Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, InDesign, Dreamweaver, MS Office, HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, MySQL databases.

Some experience: ASP/VBscript, SQL Server, Flash.

Education

B.A. in journalism, Indiana University.


Digital Design Certificate from Sessions.edu, an accredited online school of graphic design. Courses included Web design, graphic design, Flash, JavaScript, information design, digital illustration.

Courses in Flash, XML through HTML Writers Guild