Thomas R. Smith Jr.
[thomasrsmith.com]

Current work

Director of product development and design

The Baltimore Sun – 10/07 to present

Assembled, manage and art direct a team of web professionals including web designers, web developers, videographers and project managers. This team is highly flexible and has been designed to grow and adapt to any new business opportunities that arise. We act as an in-house creative agency providing marketing solutions, product development and design for clients both internal and external.

Identify and recommend new business opportunities based on research and knowledge of web trends. Lead development of new products in conjunction with sales, marketing and editorial departments. These products are often responsible for significant growth in revenue and readership.

Work closely with marketing manager to conceptualize, create and employ campaigns for all Baltimore Sun Media Group online brands.

Conceptualize and direct design strategy, branding and marketing collateral for baltimoresun.com and the products we create.

Experienced in designing for SEO, purchasing Google Adwords, scheduling online display campaigns, scheduling admail campaigns, scheduling print ad campaigns and performing other marketing related functions.

Use metrics from Omniture and Google Analytics to track performance and make changes to web sites based on reader usage.

Follow metrics from online campaigns (banner and admail reports) and make adjustments to campaigns midstream to improve ROI.

Build and present proposals to clients to acquire new business. Build and present proposals to senior management to develop new products.

Evaluate third party technology and lead implementation. Manage relationships with vendors. When appropriate, develop internal solutions to eliminate vendor expense, make processes more efficient and ensure quality.

Manage and prioritize the needs of multiple customers, never missing deadlines and always providing the appropriate solution to any challenge.

Lead projects and drive team progress by establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with managers, employees, external clients and third party vendors.

Identify opportunities and implement solutions that increase the effectiveness and efficiencies of the department, including the development of tools, processes and reports related to job responsibilities.

Share information and learnings in both informal and formal settings throughout the company.

Create and manage department budget.

Examples of recent work

The explore sites

The Sun is publisher of a number of small circulation community newspapers. These papers overlap to cover the Baltimore metro region at a more microscopic, or hyperlocal, level than The Sun can achieve. Until recently, each of these publications had its own web site created and managed by a vendor. The sites were not monetized and the full potential for traffic was not realized.

We combined the sites into geographic area by county in order to allow the audience to find information that was relevant to them but wasn't constrained to the newspaper that showed up on their doorstep.

Each publication still retains its own site, but exists under a larger umbrella brand that helps not only with audience accessability of information and SEO, but also gives us a larger single site for ad placement that is easier to sell.

The first site of these sites launched in late May after a four-month development period. Subsequent sites launched in two week intervals thereafter. Traffic has improved and advertising space is selling quickly.

Development for these sites was done quickly using PHP and MySql. The CMS was built in DoJo.

Explorehoward.com
Explorebaltimorecounty.com
Explorecarroll.com

The video project

Two years ago we began to get into video advertising, allowing our clients to run their television commercials in banner positions on our site. These ads were successful as most ads that use animation or motion of some sort attract attention.

As I began to learn more about video by producing my own short film and by watching more of what others were doing online, it occurred to me that what we were doing wasn't reaching its full potential. The TV ads weren't meant for online use and didn't speak to that audience.

I hired a videographer and started to develop online video campaigns for our clients that were more specifically geared to an online audience.

Instead of trying to cram a 4:3 television sized ad into a 300x250 banner ad, we edited our video to fit perfectly into 728x90, 160x600, 300x100 and all other banner ad sizes. The video would speak directly to the online audience suggesting a click through as opposed to making a phone call or visiting a storefront.

The ads linked to micro sites we developed for the advertiser. The sites acted like infomercials but without the schmarm associated with their TV counterparts. We would video a business, or a part of a business, and cut the video into bite-sized chunks that the audience could play on demand based on their interest of a topic. The result was an active, information seeking experience that matched the online audience better than the passive viewing associated with television.

These new campaigns have been extremely successful for our clients. Click through rates on the banners are much higher than any of our other products including Flash and other types of rich media.

Visitors find the sites via the banner ads and through search - all sites are optimized for search engines. Once there, users spend an average six minutes of time - a huge increase over the two to four minutes averaged by newspaper sites. More importantly, after watching the videos, about 20% of the sites visitors reach out to contact the advertiser using forms provided on the sites. We have sent patients to hospitals for specific treatments. We have sold homes. We have increased traffic to local museums. We have increased gym memberships. And we have built a new revenue stream where there was none before.

Ryland Homes: Banner 1 Banner 2 Banner 3, Site
Lifebridge Health and Fitness Center: Site
Baltimore Washington Medical Center: Banner 1 Banner 2 Banner 3, Site
Geppi's Entertainment Museum: Banner 1 Site

Bthesite.com

Traditionally, web sites have been a second thought to an established print product. Because this site was conceived in conjunction with the print product, we decided that it needed to play a larger role than just a regurgitation of what was in print.

Bthesite.com and b the paper are meant to work together to create a conversation surrounding local news and events. The paper is a collection of news briefs and stories of interest. The web site is a blog written by b staff members with comments, photos and video provided by the site users.

The site and the paper continue to gain traction in the community. Traffic and ad sales have grown since launch in early May after two months of development.

With a backbone of WordPress for the site structure and CMS and MyphpBB for talkboards and registration, additional functionality and automation was added using PHP and MySql. Users can upload photos directly to the site or indirectly from their personal flickr accounts. Video can be shared by simply urls from YouTube, Revver or Vimeo.

Bthesite.com

Awards

International Academy of the Visual Arts
2008 Communicator Awards

Silver Medal
Creative direction, design
Ethan Allen micro site

Silver Medal
Creative direction, design
Geppi Museum micro site

HBAM Max Awards

2007 Outstanding Use of Technology – Large Volume Builder
Creative Direction
Ryland Homes video site

W3 Awards

Silver, 2007, Rich Media, children's category
Creative direction
Animal Grossology video site

Addy awards

Silver, 2007, Banner ad
Creative direction
Party City flash banner

2007 MDDC Press Association awards

3rd place, Use of Cutting Edge Technology
Creative direction
Homicide Map

1st place, Innovative Online Advertising
Creative direction
Animal Grossology video site

3rd place, Innovative Online Advertising
Creative direction
Ryland Homes video banner

2nd place, Innovative Online Advertising Campaign
Creative direction
Ryland Homes video site

3rd place, Innovative Online Advertising Campaign
Creative direction, design
Geppi Museum video site

Past work

Creative services manager

The Baltimore Sun – 06/06 to 10/07

Sr. web designer

The Baltimore Sun – 03/04 to 06/06

Web designer

The Baltimore Sun – 09/00 to 03/04

Developed, designed and produced all advertising and marketing web sites and banner ads on baltimoresun.com and related sites, as well as various collateral including logos, e-mail newsletters, convention displays, print ads, invitations, sales kits and tsotchkes.

Instituted internship program to teach young designers while covering additional workflow within budget constraints.

Developed new products and enhanced existing products to be more viable, easier to sell and easier to use, resulting in increased traffic and revenue.

Hired, managed and art directed design team including full-time employees and interns.

Designed logo and letterhead for baltimoresun.com, the baltimore sun's online identity.

Editor-in-Chief

The UB Post – 09/02 to 12/04

Managed reporters, photographers, designers and other staff members to produce student-run newspaper.

Edited all content and art-directed layout of each publication.

Nurtured close relationship with university officials and administration.

During my tenure readership, student participation and ad revenues increased.

Obtained $10,000 grant to build computer lab for newspaper.

Web producer, site editor

The Indiana Gazette – 11/99 to 08/00

Developed, maintained and updated indianagazette.com.

Mapped the direction of interactive for the future and coordinated online sales.

Wrote weekly column on the internet and associated technology.

Design assistant

Lantel Design Group – 01/99 to 11/99

Wrote and edited HTML

Resized and adjusted photos and other graphics.

Assisted Owner with web design, technical writing, creative writing and proofreading.

Work Philosophy

Development

I ascribe to the 37signals school of thought on product development as can be read in their manifesto from 1999. Simply put, a product should be launched with minimal features. It should be built in a short amount of time and with minimal resources. Planning should take weeks instead of months; building should take months instead of years. After launch, feature updates should be made frequently and quickly based on need and user feedback after.

Using this method, instead of some of the more bloated methods adopted by many larger firms, I am able to produce many new products in a short amount of time and on a smaller budget. Some of these products will be successful, many will not, but because we use fewer resources and maintain shorter turn-around times, our successful projects become profitable more quickly. Because we don't invest as much into a new product, we are able to abandon it less-painfully if it doesn't work. If it does work, we quickly throw more resources at it and improve upon the original.

When I hire developers, I look for someone who is fast on their toes and knowledgeable in multiple languages. Their code must be simple and clean and clear of redundancies. They need to be flexible and able to change directions quickly.

Design [in general]

Design is a marriage of images and words that work together to communicate. If the design doesn't communicate the message clearly, it is a failure - no matter how beautiful it may be.

However, ignoring beauty and creativity will cause a design to fail just as quickly. We are bombarded by thousands of messages every day. Only those that are inventive and unique can grab our attention.

Design software is cheap and allows anyone claim to be a graphic designer. However, drop shadows and outlined type aren't solutions to design challenges. When I hire designers, I make sure that they are disciples of the basic tenets of design: proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast, type and color.

Web design

More than any other medium, it is difficult to design for the web. Not everyone sees things in exactly the same way. Everyone has a different combination of operating system, browser (model and version) and internet connection and each of these can affect the way a user views everything from web sites to videos.

I insist on web design that is clean and follows closely (but not too closely) to W3C standards. All work must be checked on multiple browsers and platforms and must be optimized for search engines.

Web designers who can't hand-code need not apply.

Skills & Education

Web programming

Self-taught expert in HTML and CSS. Self-taught, strong working-knowledge of javascript, php and other programming languages.

Software

Self-taught expert in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Self-taught high-level knowledge of Flash. Self-taught working knowledge of Adobe Indesign and Quark Xpress.

Comfortable with both Mac and PC work stations.

Education

MA, Publications design - University of Baltimore, May 2006

Honors

Spirit of Innovation Award, 2003-2004
Sigma Alpha Omicron award, 2003-2004
Certificate of Merit, 2003-2004

BA, Journalism - Indiana University of Pennsylvania, December 1998

Of note

President of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, Theta Chi chapter

Treasurer of Inter Fraternity Council

Personal traits

Outgoing and assertive, with great communication & presentation skills

Ability to communicate effectively and collaborate with a wide range of personalities.

Analytic ability to determine real world feasibility of initiatives.

Capacity for big picture thinking and the aptitude to create consensus.

Passionate about the interactive space and comfortable with new technology in general

Highly organized

Charisma to lead, the drive to succeed, and the ability to grow

Other interests

Amateur photographer, filmmaker, painter and craftsman