Steven D. Mikel.

Galleried fine artist · 25+ years in design & production

Professional Experience

Competitive Edge Solutions

2001 to Present · Owner, Chief Envisioneer

  • Produced hundreds of wine label design concepts along with finished press-ready art for Napa Valley private wine bottling customers.
  • Designed logos, branding and web sites and laid out high-resolution artwork for printed marketing materials: direct mail postcards, brochures, business cards, email signatures, email blasts, banners, listing presentations, car vinyl and magnets.
  • Responsible for the video production of hundreds of MLS-compliant 'Virtual Open House' video tours: videography, photography, storyline composition and script, voice-over recording and cleanup, and video editing in iMovie, Premiere or Blender across multiple output formats.
  • Modified and enhanced UI/UX aspects of a proprietary Andon system, written in C#, using Visual Studio and MS SQL Server.
  • Designed and developed subscription-based mobile web applications and data-driven systems integrating PayPal and Google Wallet APIs.

Nielsen, Inc. · Scarborough Division (Arbitron), Coral Springs, FL

2017 to 2019 · Senior Analyst

  • Re-coded existing Visual Basic, FoxPro, Access and MS SQL Server programs to improve UI/UX, processing speed and efficiency, reducing required time by ~480 man-hours a year. Wrote 500+ pages of documentation.
  • Built a data-driven 'problem character fix' module and consolidated duplicated programs into reusable, table-driven releases.

IDLogistics (IDL), Dayton OH

1999 to 2001 · Senior Software Engineer

  • Team lead on a globally integrated 'dynamic product' ordering and manufacturing system (Windows application to Oracle) spanning domestic and foreign facilities, complex user permissions, and multiple order-receiving methods, with linked customer catalog tables for barcode, price and variable data.

Information Engineering Corp (IEC), Dayton & Cincinnati OH

1998 to 1999 · Software Developer

  • Developed ASP on IIS and Visual Basic 6.0 COM objects interfacing with Oracle, generating dynamic SQL and returning data via object properties/methods.
  • Built a dynamic web site (Visual InterDev, FrontPage, IIS, MS SQL Server) that assembled HTML based on client profile, product subscriptions and data-driven structures.

Monarch Marking (Avery Dennison), Dayton OH

1994 to 1997 · Service Bureau Division · Programmer / Developer

  • Built a Delphi 2.0 (Object Pascal) Windows application on Win95/NT to retrieve, process, transmit and track daily orders for domestic and overseas production facilities.
  • Solely built a complete variable print imaging application in Clipper 5.2 that merged variable text and graphics with data-driven templates, calculated step-and-repeat offset-plate layout for least waste, and output direct to plate via Autologic (ICL RIP) or Postscript.
  • Designed a utility for Postscript font downloading, image management and imagesetter calibration, plus a TIFF compression-format converter.

Training & Certifications

  • KnowledgeSync Certification (Made2Manage interface tool)
  • Licensed Florida Real Estate Sales Agent (voluntarily inactive)
  • Oracle, Developer/2000 Foundation and Forms I (Oracle Education, Indianapolis)
  • Oracle, Introduction to Oracle: SQL and PL/SQL, Advanced SQL and SQL+ (Oracle Education, Cincinnati)

Education

  • Ohio Institute of Photography, Commercial Photography Major
  • Vandalia-Butler Senior High School, Vandalia OH: Art/Graphic Design, Honors Math
  • Accepted into Purdue College of Mechanical Engineering; relocated for a major career opportunity.

Fine Art & Portfolio