Todd Greco

Experience

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  DMA Magazine

  Jan 1992 - Jan 1994

  Staff Writer

  In my first real job, I was a reviewer tasked with seeking out and writing about "underground dance music" for DMA. Somewhere in there I interviewed Reel 2 Real (remember them?) and got blacklisted for one of my reviews by my favorite remix company, Razormaid. Fun times. It was because of this job I'm able to drive my copywriters crazy by playing editor.

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  Fahlgren

  Jun 1994 - Jan 1995

  Production Manager - Internet

  I acted as the rosetta stone between our outsourced development team (proxicom) and our internal design team (which was very print-focused, and wasn't sure why there wasn't a vowel in 'ftp'). I learned how to speak advertising here, which really helped in the rest of my career.

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  MC2 Interactive

  Jan 1995 - Sept 1997

  Art Director/Production Manager

  Design of websites including LaneBryant.com, Compuserve.net, CamelotMusic.com, and AEP.com. At the same time, I acted as the voice of the technology department and managed the html production crew. My office had a large hat rack.

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  CyberSight (which then became ninedots)

  Sept 1997 - Jan 2000

  Senior Art Director

  This was a fun time. During the dot com boom, I got to run the design for molson.com, as well as pitch in on visa.com, capncrunch.com, and build a series of dhtml sites for Chevy Chase Banks. I won awards, strengthened my portfolio, and really learned how to work with a team. I also got to actually use LISP in a production environment, which none of my CS buddies believe to this day.

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  Rapidigm (now Fujitsu Consulting)

  Jan 2000 - Jan 2002

  Creative Director

  Lead the creative department for this tech-firm during the bursting of the bubble. We built websites for Mexico.com and Interlogix in our jsp framework, which meant that I got to learn the joys of UML and very very very long development times.

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  BluePAVO

  Feb 2002 - Apr 2004

  Partner / Creative Director

  With my partner Franz, bluePAVO lead the way in marketing cd-rom development for Logitech as well as gave me a platform for music production and experimental interface design. In addition, I designed the front end for La Opinion's entertainment section (in spanish) and a series of flash demos for Merant.

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  Portland State University

  Sept 2003 - Dec 2019

  Adjunct Professor

  I taught graphic design at Portland State University as an adjunct professor for almost four years. In that time, i taught sophomore and junior design studio, a "How to Operate in an Interactive Team" class, as well as a senior "Intro to Flash Programming and Animation" class. I jokingly called it "Programming for Poets", and it certainly helped me sharpen my programming skills at the same time.After 4 years of that, I left the undergrads and took up teaching adults in the Multimedia Certificate program. I bounced around in Adobe apps and instructed beginner and advanced sessions in Photoshop in 7 hour * 2 day chunks. Who knew I could talk for that long? I also co-taught a capstone/portfolio development class, which was a great natural extension of my previous Interactive Team lab series.Currently, I'm teaching a Business Model Innovation class for a Design Thinking certificate track. It's a fine way of teaching new executives to take a moment to diagnose their current business, and then brainstorm different ways that they can change how they sell their products, services, or platforms. Yes, it's weird having a designer teach an MBA course, but it's also a great way to think about systems strategically and not get lost in the numbers. Show less

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  Euro RSCG Edge

  May 2004 - Feb 2009

  Associate Creative Director

  I took the lead on motion graphics and interactive design for a variety of clients (iShares, Barclays, Adobe, Allstate, Agilent, Visa, Intel, CBFleet). My job responsibilities were hard to pin down, as I jump from simple page design, object oriented flash programming, after effects renders, client relations, sales, and interface mockups seamlessly. During this time, I designed or creative directed the interface for Adobe Bridge for CS2-3 (and parts of CS4), a series of yearly versions of the Pro PGA sites for the Barclays Classic, and a number of iterations of iShares.com. Show less

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  Spun Academy

  Jan 2006 - Apr 2009

  Professor/Board Member

  Professor of Music, specializing in teaching kids how to spin records and rock the party. Honestly, I forged some new ground by codifying some of the ideas of the professional club dj (my life for over 10 years) into an educational environment. Writing the syllabus was a blast. Later on, I found some of my same thinking in Berklee and Scratch DJ Academy syllabi, so I must have done something right.

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  Fashionbuddha Studio

  Feb 2009 - Apr 2011

  Creative Director

  I finally took the plunge and got out of traditional digital advertising (is it old enough to be considered traditional yet?) and started working more in interactive exhibit design and creation. This involves arcane languages (c++ for the most part), soldering irons, and very little documentation. I love every minute of it. When I wasn't doing that, I lead out the design group at Fashionbuddha, concentrating more on future touch-based interfaces and public-space interactive experiences than traditional websites. Oh, and iPhone apps. Those, too. In addition, we created quite a few interactive demos for the Intel Labs teams for their various demo days and IDF presentations, and designed and built a touch-enabled fog screen for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Show less

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  Ziba Design

  Apr 2011 - Apr 2020

  I was the Interaction Design Craft Lead for Ziba, and in that role bounced between growing my team of interaction designers while at the same time looking and testing new tools and processes that will help us deliver amazing experiences for our clients.In addition, I was our resident enterprise expert, and was called in to help larger organizations get their product mojo back. So, I held sessions to help spin up agile teams, got larger organizations to think in Lean/MVP ways, and educated upper management on how to empower their teams to deliver products at the speed and tenacity of a startup. My expertise lies in both design (visual as well as interaction and research) and programming (I build my own prototypes, and jump in to help developers whenever possible), but lately it's been business auditing (both auditing existing processes and asking "why" so often that I sound like a 2 year old sometimes) that's taken over my day-to-day consultant work. It's an interesting place--I used to be called in after someone had decided how to march. Now, I get called in because something feels wrong, and, through rigorous evaluation and diagnosis of the situation, my team finds the right thing to make at the right time in the right way. It's a nice level up.Lately, my focus was with FedEx, and included quite a few different projects and programs that had a digital output, but required quite a bit of planning and business strategy to discover the right output. I also worked hard to find out how to make U.S. healthcare better by partnering up with both providers and startups to see how we could fix any and all touch points throughout the system. It's funny that, after 20 years of working in digital, when you start thinking strategically, you begin to think more like a Service Designer than a technologist. If you check out some of my published work down below, you'll probably be able to suss out what I worked on. Specializing in innovation means everything is opaque, right? Show less I helped bring a spirit of prototyping and building to the Ziba UX department, which meant starting a group (the kinetic design group), experimenting in air, arduino, obj-c, html5, interactive pdfs, and whatever else let us build an experience on the quick. Also, I designed interfaces, dreamt up products/services, and did qualitative design research. So, pretty much all aspects of UX, actually.Current clients include: AT&T, FedEx, State Farm, Adidas, P&G, SiriusXM, Samsung, Coast Capital Banks (Vancouver BC regional), Technicolor, and Intel. Show less

  • Director, Interaction Design / Creative Director

    Jul 2012 - Apr 2020

  • Senior Kinetic Designer

    Apr 2011 - Jul 2012
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  Slalom Build

  Apr 2020 - now

  Director, Experience Design

  I lead Slalom Build's Experience Design capability in Portland.Basically, it was interesting to see what leading a group of designers inside of a much larger group of technologists would feel like, and better see what design and development at scale felt like. After years of being the nerdiest designer in a sea of artists, being the most design-focused in a sea of engineers is refreshing.Slalom Build is a purpose-built consultancy that builds enterprise-class software in agile ways, and teaches companies how to do just that at the same time. It's a dream come true to work for a place that has a process that we can build upon, but still has the flexibility and nimble nature of a startup. Honestly, it's the best of both worlds. So far, I've helped lead the design of a ML-lead system that analyzes the US rail system and offers intelligent ways to best keep it safe by identifying problems before they happen. I've also worked bringing a design system to a large enterprise that needed visual quality to be scalable, investigated and tested new business models for an online auto company, and worked with data and sport scientists to better engage with athletes. It's been a blast.If you're interested in what design at scale from a consultancy could feel like, while solving crazy hard engineering challenges along the way, come join us. Show less