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Ashleigh M
Pritchard
1304 Spruce Street, Martinsville, Virginia 24112
ashleigh@charmcat.net
charmcat.net
Skills
Trained in
- Graphic and visual design
- Style Guide development
- Vector art
- Publication design
- Photo editing
- Web design (mobile first)
- Branding
- Copyediting
- Copywriting
- HTML/CSS
- FTP
- Visual art, including painting and drawing
- Photography
Software
- Adobe, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign
- WordPress and Woocommerce
- Apple iOS and Pages suite
- QuarkXPress
- Adobe Rush
- Google Docs suite
Still learning
- PHP and MySQL
- Video editing
- Adobe Premiere
- Adobe Lightroom
- Accessible design
Relevant Work Experience
Owner and Chief Creative Officer – 04/13 - now
CharmCat Creative, LLC in Martinsville, VA
- Design and create stationery items for print
- Work with custom clients to create personalized, branded stationery for weddings and events
- Sketch and paint original artwork
- Digitize artwork for print
- Design marketing materials and wholesale catalog
- Design and code custom WordPress website; maintain site
- Write, design, and copyedit content for website, social media, and marketing materials
- Manage bookkeeping and financial filings
Junior Graphic Designer – 06/12 - 12/16
American Diagnostic Corp in Hauppauge, NY
- Edited and designed promotional materials
- Designed new product artwork
- Edited and designed product packaging and product inserts
- Edited and updated catalog for print and web
- Scripted, shot, and edited product how-to videos
- Designed new website and worked with IT to execute
- Completed other various graphic design tasks as assigned
Fine Arts Instructor – 07/11 - 06/12
Michaels, Inc, in Rocky Point, NY
- Assisted store managers with marketing
- Designed and executeed lesson plans
- Customer relations and sales
Contributing Editor – 01/10 - 06/12
The Southampton Review of Stony Brook University in Southampton, NY
- Selected pieces for publication
- Copy edited selections
- Designed an updated style guide
Art Director – 01/09 - 06/10
McDaniel Free Press of McDaniel College in Westminster, MD
- Supervised layout team
- Designed and laid out pages
- Packaged and sent documents to the printer
- Created and ran inDesign workshops
- Trained new art director and layout staff
Education
Stony Brook Southampton
Southampton, NY
Graduated: August 2012
MFA in Writing and Literature
Focus: Publishing and Editing, Poetry, Teaching
Cumulative GPA: 4.0
McDaniel College
Westminster, MD
Graduated: May 2010
B.A. in Art and Graphic Design
Minors in Writing and Journalism
Cumulative GPA: 3.8 (Magna Cum Laude)
Press
- A Styled Wedding with Elevated Modern Flair, Virginia Bride Magazine, scheduled 2020 publication, Styled Shoot, Wedding Invitation Design
- Better together: An Early Mountain wedding embraces multiple cultures, C-ville blog, 01/20, Published Client Project, Wedding Invitation Design and Custom Map Design
- Elegant Emerald Green Wedding Inspiration, United With Love blog, 10/19, Published Styled Shoot, Watercolor Venue Painting
- This Tidewater Inn Wedding is Straight Out of Shakespeare, What’s Up Media, 10/19, Published Client Project, Wedding Invitation Design
- Shannon & Tory, Carats & Cake blog, 06/19, Published Client Project, Wedding Invitation Design
- Dreaming Of Spring (Virginia Wedding Inspiration), Virginia Bride Magazine, 03/19, Published Styled Shoot, Wedding Invitation Design
- Bear’s Den Whimsical Mountain Overlook Styled Shoot, Let’s Bee Together blog, 03/19, Published Styled Shoot, Wedding Invitation Design and Custom Map Design
- Styled Shoots: Design ideas for every season, Cover Story, Frederick Weddings magazine, 2018, Published Editorial Shoot, Custom Map Design
- Colorful Latin Wedding Inspiration, United With Love blog, 09/18, Published Styled Shoot, Wedding Invitation Design and Signage
- Eastern Shore Wedding At The Tidewater Inn | Lauren & Bill, Carly Fuller Photography blog, 08/18, Published Client Project, Wedding Invitation Design
- 14 alternative wedding invitations & stationery ideas (funny, geeky, and chic!), Offbeat Bride, 03/18, Published Client Project, Wedding Invitation Design
- A Black Horse Inn Virginia Styled Wedding, The Overwhelmed Bride blog, 02/18, Published Styled Shoot, Wedding Invitation Design
- A Wild West Wedding, Cover Story, Connecticut Bride Magazine, Spring/Summer 2017, Published Editorial Shoot, Wedding Invitation Design
- A Modern Botanical Garden Wedding, The Perfect Palette blog, 04/17, Published Styled Shoot, Wedding Invitation Design
- Missed our NY Vendor Social? Be sure to check out The Bedford!, District Bliss blog, 03/16, Published Client Project, Event Stationery Design
- 3 New Stationery Collections That Shine With Spring Feeling, Bespoke Bride, 04/15, Editorial Coverage, Wedding Invitation Design
Selected Portfolio
This WordPress-run website was designed, themed, and built by me. Special features include Woocommerce store with custom filtering, a "shop by guide" feature, find a font and color tools, and a dynamic contact form. Every one of these features is build custom for the site, utilizing best practices for custom post types and taxonomies, and has a fully integrated GUI in the admin for adding new content. The site is fully mobile responsive.
Other websites I've designed and implemented include: https://www.mhcdcva.org, https://carlpritchard.com, and https://www.pasttime.org.
I also created the design and theming for https://www.adctoday.com and worked with an IT team to implement the code in Drupal.
This catalog is an excellent example of several of my skills. All the products in the catalog were designed and created by me. All of the product thumbnail images were created by me, by taking a photograph of a blank product (i.e. a blank card with envelope), and then creating mock-up template in Photoshop. The document styles and design were all done by me, as well. The catalog was created in InDesign and uses well-managed style sheets and master pages.
A few examples of my wedding invitation designs and the process behind creating them. You can see how I take a client's ideas and translate them into a visual final product. Doing wedding invitations often requires multiple proof rounds as clients change their minds a lot. I create all the artwork and text layout for print and often assemble the final product.
I created this map and guide to accompany a project for one of my poetry classes. We held a gallery opening where we paired a work of visual art with an audio recording of a poem we wrote about the piece. We then created an audio tour in partnership with a local gallery. The overall theme was about "conversation, commercialism, reductionism, and abstraction," so I got my inspiration from subway maps, which tend to reduce complex ideas into a simple, abstract design for commuters.
The Contrast magazine was the annual literary magazine for McDaniel College. For 2010's design, I was inspired by contact sheets used in photography, which is when you develop a thumbnail of all your exposures and mark them up with an oil pencil, picking only the best ones to make full prints. The film detail at the corner of each page is taken from a photograph of my own. The magazine is half-letter size, making it feel more like a notebook or journal than a formal magazine.