Seth Lambert
is
looking for new projects.
Objective

New content writing, copywriting, technical writing and visual design projects.
Skills

Discerning, bold, uncompromisingly innovative Visual Designer

Accomplished Image-builder, Videographer, Editor, and Director

World-class native English Writer and Essayist

Constructs bespoke, original, and lucent content by hand

Uses proven development methodologies (Agile, Lean, Kanban) to accomplish technical goals and achieve milestone objectives

Builds custom tools and makes creative use of off-the-shelf apps to generate content that is passionate, meaningful, timely, and salient

Envisages and reverse-engineers paths to success for business-specific modalities, contingencies, conditions, and functionalities

Continually improvises new solutions and means for overcoming logistical barriers and contextual obstructions

Understands where audiences lie demographically, geographically, and statistically

Comprehends target marketing implications for tailoring products and messaging

Meticulously identifies audience goals and technological comfort levels

Regularly conducts in-depth assessment of competitors' strengths and weaknesses and leverages learnings to improve internal processes, strategies and designs

Excels at amplifying perception of digital equity and magnifying impact of components to turn basic compositions into sophisticated showpieces

Specializes in crafting rich narratives from sparse assets and modest budgets

Able to conform to strict Google guidelines for responsive web design (RWD)

Hand-codes HTML, CSS, and Javascript

Works, and has worked, with content management systems since 2002, and has built own CMS tools from scratch

Has forged intricate custom-scripted database solutions with personalized I/O
Assets

Key UI philosophies rooted in MacOS and Xerox PARC human-computer interaction (HCI) design principles as originated and disseminated by Larry Tesler, Jef Raskin, Bruce Tognazzini, Alan Kay, and others

Follower and practitioner of above principles as a MacOS user since 1984

Deep and broad UI development background; has directly interacted with UI pioneers Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Mitch Kapor and Marc Canter

Veteran experience in originating UX solutions that are consistently pleasant, rewarding, and reinforcing, helping users to efficiently accomplish tasks and transparently absorb UI approaches with little to no instruction

Possesses creative experience across an expansive range of visual media: film, video, photography, fine art, environmental design, graphic design, package design

30+ year history of creating digital content for the web and for multimedia applications and products (pre-web)

Three decades of work experience at Fortune Global 100 companies (5+ years), mid-size companies (15+ years), and startups (10+ years) across a wide range of industries: finance, technology, advertising, media, manufacturing, medical, education, hospitality, retail, and entertainment

Has served as the head of three startup organizations; has managed multiple businesses in a chief executive capacity

Substantial medium- and long-term project management skill; has overseen multi-year development and deployment efforts

Robust personnel management experience (of teams of up to 5 people), including of offsite work groups and long-term offshore agents

Strong familiarity with American East Coast and European business geography, working habits, and practices

Extensive network of contacts in academic, cultural, research, publishing, government, and non-profit organizations

Large personal archive of images, artwork, video clips, typefaces, photos, and other resources for use in new projects
Qualities

Unrelenting motivational drive

Creative out-of-the-box thinker with incredibly broad and fertile imagination

Strategic multi-phase planner and conceptualizer, with ability to foresee the effective meshing of multiple layers of moving parts

Able to identify key differential qualities of historically successful products or services in most industries

Tenacious—able to explain positions and justify sound bases of approach, even if unconventional or risqué

Innate sense of technical, content, and/or marketing ingredients necessary for successful execution of most operations

Adaptive—able to smoothly transition between multiple simultaneous roles

Entrepreneurial-minded—recognizes market opportunities and openings, and continually envisions mechanisms by which to profit from them

Efficient—artful in employing the Pareto principle (20% of the work results in 80% of the reward)

Economical—eliminates resource waste, inflation, and overuse wherever and whenever possible

Consistently informed by the most wide-ranging and authoritative news services, alternative content and specialty market media

Immersed in trends and industry back-and-forth in personal computer technology, entertainment design, social media and advertising

Persistent investigative sense with deep “big-picture” analytical tendencies; quick to recognize broad patterns and grander themes

Visionary—has predicted inventions and innovations in the advertising, home automation and retail industries

Instinctively perceives content saturation; able to ascertain when substance is sufficient, or needs more bulk and/or density

Intuitive sense of when to deploy modern vs. traditional assets in content and marketing campaigns

Keen and genuine interest in international relations, geopolitics, history, and social change
Curriculum Vitae



CEO | Writing Direct

08/2016 — Present

Writing Direct is my brand name for writing services. I plan and produce English-language content and copy for clients in the high-technology, financial, publishing, travel and automotive industries. I have written for hundreds of clients, including Seagate, Showa Group, Midland States Bank, OnPoint Credit Union, MinebeaMitsumi, Cloudstreet, ElectrifAi, Paramount Global, ParissWhittaker, NuRevital, NetReputation, Admiral, and Applebee's. Samples of my writing are viewable at: www.writing.direct.

I've developed both online and offline content for internal and external communications, websites, books, blogs, catalogs, social media campaigns and advertisements. Clients invariably benefit from my services due to my consistent application of CMOS and AP Style, raising the standard of the writing I output to an academic level prior to comprehensive editing and refinement.

I directly oversee and process all content associated with the Writing Direct name. In the six years of the company's existence, I've personally written more than one million words.



Visual Designer + Web Developer + Copywriter | Sunrise Real Estate Corp.

01/2006 — 01/2014

At Sunrise Real Estate Corp. I built an extensive listings/customer database and created from scratch the front-end (including all art direction/creative direction and coding) and back-end, as well as all content (including advertising copy), of a database-driven website, viewable under the Voro Real Estate banner at: www.sunrisebk.com. For this site, I determined the task flow, interaction design, navigation strategy, content specification, typographic colophon and mobile interoperability. In addition, I creative directed, art directed, and wrote all the content—approximately 10-20 ads per week—as well as maintained and updated the site. The advertisements I wrote copy for were targeting customers for some of the highest-value transactions many of them would engage in in their entire lives. The copy had to be witty, unique, memorable, and brief. It had to hold their attention more than copy from competing ads, and compel them to make decisions, and to take trips to neighborhoods in New York City that they often hadn't been to before. My ads netted Sunrise approximately $500,000 in transactions over the course of my eight years with the company. In addition, I was also a premier licensed sales agent for the company in the Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Greenpoint neighborhoods of Brooklyn, and Ridgewood in Queens, New York. I built and maintained many successful relationships with landlords and developers, and became a trusted resource for clients in the North Brooklyn area.



Hotel Operator | Space 347

04/2009 — 12/2013

I was the creator, operator, and sole investor of a 24-room hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, featuring an elevator, wraparound roof deck, automated electronic entertainment devices, and vintage art and decor. I created the concept, structure, interiors, lighting, signage, and collateral for the hotel from start to finish, as well as managing reservations seven days per week. In addition, I wrote all sales copy, describing each room and the hotel's unique features. This copy was used in advertisements on multiple websites and networks to drive reservations and promote the hotel. The hotel was 90+% occupied year-round, with hundreds of guests originating from more than 36 countries. Although the marketing budget was miniscule by industry standards, the hotel turned away business, and although now defunct, the property continues to receive reservation requests and repeat stay inquiries. Photos of the hotel can be seen at: www.is.gd/CRYM5c.



Vice President E-Business | JPMorganChase

02/2001 — 03/2003

I was Vice-President in the E-Business Division of Credit Card Services at the largest North American bank—second largest credit card issuer worldwide and part of Chase.com (U.S. Alexa ranking: 25). I co-managed the company's credit card website and content management system, and co-managed online advertising and campaign content integration. I helped upgrade content presentation and management software during revisions of the user interface. I helped to integrate feedback from third party user experience testing and search engine optimization efforts. I worked in concert with the Marketing, Project Management, Customer and Operations teams, as well as with outside vendors for design, usability testing and SEO. I made use of extensive UI/UX experience to help manage the packaging of content in a concise, cohesive, user-friendly way while retaining branding, consistency, and look-and-feel of the site. I contributed to the copy on the website, and to copy for other Chase-branded sites integrating Credit Card Services content. The latest version of the Chase Credit Card site is at: www.creditcards.chase.com.



Web Developer | Aspen Technology

10/1999 — 02/2000

I single-handedly redesigned the website of Aspen Technology, a $250 million (revenues) specialized industrial process software and technology company. The site consisted of over 1,000 unique pages, with graphics elements, tables, and forms on most pages. The launch was coordinated with an offline and online ad campaign. I created the new site from scratch, offering Aspen several different looks-and-feels to choose from in the strategizing stages. I conceived and implemented all navigation and UI methods, and wrote HTML to integrate content for the company's product, service, support, partnership, press and training offerings. All work was done off-site and completed on budget and in time for the company's AspenWorld 2000 international conference. The latest design of the Aspen website can be seen at: www.aspentech.com.



Web Developer | Hologic

08/1998 — 01/1999

For Hologic, a Bedford, Massachusetts-based manufacturer of medical X-ray equipment, I redesigned the company's website, formerly virtually text-only, into a cohesive, unified property that featured colorful graphics and a streamlined user interface. I incorporated links to PDFs and product information documentation and made the company's new product lineup easy to understand and parse. The site is viewable at: www.is.gd/CrCPTA.



Creative Lead | McCann-Erickson

08/1997 — 01/1998

For McCann Erickson (then the world's largest ad agency), I was a Web Designer and Creative Lead at their Thunderhouse division (later merged into Zentropy Partners, and subsequently known as MRM Partners Worldwide). I created online advertising (banners, interstitials, others) and website elements for clients such as AT&T, Motorola, Chase Manhattan, Charles Schwab, Philips Electronics, Nestlé, Intel, SAP, Silicon Graphics, Hasbro, Gateway and Durex. My responsibilities included design, copywriting, art direction, and the creation of ads and web elements, as well as additional work for associated digital projects. I regularly contributed to the conceptualization and strategizing of ads, as someone who understood very well the technical limitations of bandwidth and viewer operating systems at the time. Some samples of work I produced at Thunderhouse are viewable at: www.is.gd/s8HXCV.



Founder and CEO | It's Alive! Multimedia

11/1988 — 11/1995

It's Alive! was a company I founded to produce multimedia work after gaining experience using Macromedia Director (now Adobe Director) as an authoring tool while working for Macromind (see below). Employing four other people and occupying a 6,000 square foot office space in a 100-year-old building in the heart of downtown Boston, Massachusetts, the company executed projects for Harvard and Harvard Business School, GTE/Sylvania, Gillette, John Hancock, Apple, and many other firms. At It's Alive! I wore many hats, often simultaneously, including (but not limited to): CEO, manager, producer, client liaison, art director, creative director, designer, technical problem solver, editor, photographer, videographer, UI designer, sound editor, and copywriter. For many years, it was a 24/7/365 job, but an extremely rewarding one, as I was able to make a great number of creative decisions personally. In addition to work for clients, the company also produced several innovative self-promotional media kits, one of which featured the world's first 3-inch format CD-ROM, containing a sampling of the company's works and licensed music. At the time of It's Alive!'s existence, there were very few companies of its type doing this kind of work.



Multimedia Consultant | Sanyo

09/1995 — 09/1995

For Sanyo, now a brand of Japanese electronics giant Panasonic, I created a standalone, turnkey multimedia trade show display advertising their real-time no-glasses-required 3-dimensional displays, a radical new product line. I incorporated sequences of athletic movement originally motion-captured and rendered on Silicon Graphics computers using Wavefront software into Macromedia Director animations on MacOS. It took a maximally (memory-wise and storage-wise) configured machine to play them back. As development of the piece was done on the displays themselves, the sequences took tremendous advantage of the 3-D technology, seeming as if they were playing in the space in front of the screens they were shown on, rather than on their surface. The entire project was produced on-site in Tokyo, and delivered in 3 weeks. A description of the technology behind the displays is here: www.is.gd/KJPC8K.



Multimedia Consultant | America Online

04/1995 — 05/1995

For America Online, I produced a full-screen animated Macromedia Director presentation that was broadcast via satellite to all their employees at their worldwide annual team meeting. It played immediately before a speech by Chairman Steve Case, and featured twin themes of “diversity” and “fun”, employing a driving musical soundtrack, brief text, colorful animated strips of people, and a 3-D animated fly-through of the AOL logo at the end to deliver its message. It was one of the first multimedia productions to be broadcast at a Fortune 500 company-wide meeting. America Online is now a brand of Verizon Media and can be found at: www.aol.com.



Multimedia Consultant | ASACA Shibasoku

09/1993 — 10/1993

In record time, I produced on-site in Tokyo, Japan an elaborate turnkey multimedia trade show display, featuring a driving soundtrack and intense animations of colorful photos, technical images, and Japanese text, for Asaca Shibasoku, a Tokyo-based manufacturer of High-Speed Magneto-Optical Disk Drives. The display was produced for IGAS, Asia's largest printing equipment show, held in Chiba, a Japanese prefecture. The display, announcing their high-end jukebox-style AMD-1340 product, was highly successful and memorable, enabling Asaca to sign up major new customers and receive press attention. Asaca Shibasoku can be found here: www.shibasoku.co.jp.



Multimedia Consultant | Romeo Gigli

04/1993 — 05/1993

I created an intriguing and compelling multimedia retail store display for Romeo Gigli, a well-known Italian high-fashion brand. Featuring catchy music by UK pop group St. Etienne, the display incorporated clips from the company's runway shows of recent years, and was well-received by them. Romeo Gigli has a splashy presence on the web here: www.romeogigli.it.



Multimedia Consultant | Gillette

08/1992 — 09/1992

At Gillette, the premier men's disposable razor company (at that time number 20 on the Fortune 500 list), I created the company's 1992 annual stockholders' meeting presentation in Macromedia Director. It was given to stockholders, analysts, and members of the press in Boston and New York. The heavyweight presentation was synchronized to a speech by company Chairman Alfred Zeien and featured a shimmering, animated color-cycling logo at its conclusion. It was one of the first Fortune 500 stockholder presentations to be all-digital, and thereafter, no other stockholders' presentations by the company were given in an analog medium. The content of the presentation can be downloaded here: www.is.gd/v9tE7L.



Multimedia Consultant | Harvard Business School

08/1990 — 12/1991

I created many interactive multimedia works and applications during an extended period of consultancy for Harvard Business School, utilizing Macromedia Director and other MacOS-based tools. One of the applications, for the Program for Management Development, was a “Campus Tour” CD-ROM for incoming students (who were each given a Mac computer as part of the program). The application introduced them to the school's campus, allowed them to get information about the program's faculty, and gave them tools to explore the surrounding area. It featured early sound-synchronized video clips of their professors (produced prior to the advent of QuickTime playback software), and pictures of locations and well-known destinations in nearby Harvard Square, Cambridge. For this application, I created all graphics, wrote all copy, shot all photos and video, edited all sound clips, and integrated all media into a run-time Macromedia Director application. Other projects I executed for HBS included digital case studies built in Director and HyperCard, covering multinational concerns including Nestlé, Asea Brown Boveri and Hoechst. HBS is at: www.hbs.edu.



Technical Support Lead | Macromind (later Macromedia)

12/1987 — 08/1988

Following a chance encounter at an early Macworld trade exposition, I was hired by Macromind Chairman Marc Canter to be one of two technical support representatives for the company's products during its fledgling startup phase in Chicago. The company later moved to San Francisco, merged with Paracomp and Allaire, and was renamed Macromedia, better known as the maker of Flash for the web. In 2005, Adobe purchased the combined entity for $3.4 billion. I was employee 28. In addition to technical support, my duties included working with the development team to eliminate software bugs, testing various new beta versions of products, helping the company to prepare for upcoming trade shows and write documentation, keeping track of inventory of products, and assisting senior management with various projects.



Education



Certificate | Harvard University Extension School

09/1992 — 02/1993

4.0 Grade. I enrolled in a program to study the masters of American Literature at Harvard University Extension School, which makes use of the campus and classrooms of Harvard University. I studied America's classic literary giants, including Faulkner, Ellison, Wharton and James, and bettered my own writing in the process.



Graduate | Framingham MA South High School

09/1982 — 06/1987

Graduate, Class of 1987. While in school, I participated in a work-study program at Palladian Software, an artificial intelligence software company affiliated with MIT. I installed and administrated an early computer network there, created graphics, and taught classes to software engineers. A Harvard Business School case study about the company can be found here: www.is.gd/TLiGAf



References



‘I have known Seth since the early ’90s when he immediately impressed me by his highly-evolved aesthetic sensibility. He has an unrivaled capacity to quickly produce articulate, eloquent writing. When his skills get applied to creative or marketing assignments, the results have been striking—his talent in composing powerful, compelling content is matched only by his ability to style it beautifully. We have worked together on a number of projects, for Harvard Business School and other blue-chip clients. I know firsthand how his originality and direction can take creative efforts to extraordinary levels. I recently engaged him to deliver all the content related to a sequence of UX prototyping experiments for one of Intuit's flagship products, Quickbooks. He turned around new copy on each iteration in rapid time and delivered assets that were precisely conceived and executed. I can without qualification recommend Seth as someone who routinely exceeds a job's requirements, whose mind is continually formulating improvements to products, services, plans, and methodologies. Any team lucky enough to get access to his talent, drive and productivity will swiftly see the value that his content creation, technical know-how, and marketing skills contribute when executed with the mastery that Seth brings to each project.’




— Paul Sas, Principal Scientist
Intuit




‘On two different occasions, Seth saved our companies thousands of dollars in marketing costs by creating invaluable interactive promotional trade show animations on-site in Japan. With scant weeks to prepare complicated sound-synced multi-layered animations (in one of the cases in 3-D), Seth delivered over and above what was expected, drawing many visitors to our companies' booths and increasing attention to our highly complex products during a time when many of our competitors were pushing their products hard. Seth created a memorable and forward-looking video piece that drew oohs and aahs from the crowd.’




— Mark Holzbach, Board Member
ASACA Shibasoku




‘At Frictionless Commerce, Seth was hired for his long experience in UI and his sensibility in human factors prerequisites for app design. Frictionless Sourcing, the company's e-procurement product for large-scale organizations, was comprehensive and involved. Seth applied his experience to “think outside the box,” to get into the heads of users who might not have been familiar with the product or its design vocabulary. His job was to spot possibilities for users to make mistakes or to use the interface in ways the company's engineers did not anticipate, which he excelled at. He provided outstanding feedback to the development team that helped the company to improve the UI measurably. His veteran experience in the world of UX and UI makes him someone who can understand digital agency not just from a development perspective, but from a real-world usability standpoint. He is someone who can go beyond the job of simply interpreting task responsibilities, to helping a company understand how different UI methods and presentation styles fit within the grander scheme of their application flows.’




— David Drucker, User Interface Architect
Frictionless Commerce




‘At Palladian Software, Seth made important contributions to building the company's artificial intelligence expert systems for financial and manufacturing process optimization. He used his design and graphics talent to illustrate over 1,000 iconographic resources for the company's high-end ($100,000+) software. As new hardware and graphic output solutions came online, he was tasked with installing networks and teaching classes to MIT graduate engineers about productivity applications. He assimilated to the startup culture of the company easily and was able to communicate and take direction well from a respected management team at a very pioneering high-tech firm.’




— Richard Berenson, Product Manager
Palladian Software




‘Seth has shown a true ability to bring in and close deals, handle a wide array of properties, price points and customer types, and to sense the level of desire in a prospect to move forward and conduct business—the essence of true talent in the field of real estate. Along the way, he has shown his ability to be thoroughly organized, systematic, and professional in his methods and execution of prospecting, advertising, and transacting. He has built a masterful database and website for us that are the envy of any company in this business, and he has proven over and over his ability to be a self-starter. He is self-motivated and self-disciplined, and will go the distance to get deals done. He has brought additional knowledge and prestige to our firm in many neighborhoods in Brooklyn and in Queens where previously we had not been represented, and he has suggested new strategies, ideas and concepts for our company that have driven us to greater heights.’




— Jon Poler, Founder and CEO
Sunrise Real Estate Corp.




‘Seth was a consummate host, creating a wonderful stay for me during my time in New York. His accommodations proved to be very entertaining and restful after a long day of work in the city. It was satisfying to come back to a place where you could sense the manager in charge had thought of everything down to the last detail, whether it was the colorful blend of lights in the common spaces or a vintage desk in my room. It was apparent that not only did this person care a great deal about the comfort and convenience of his guests, but he also possessed an exquisite sense of design and context in the way he arranged interior space.’




— Kevin Högger, Guest
Space 347




Samples



Company Website | Writing Direct    




2021

The website for one of the companies I run, Writing Direct. I built this mobile-friendly/responsive website from scratch to show off the company's work. The site is blindingly fast, mostly because it's comprised almost exclusively of text. Known as a “one-page site” because there's no blinking or refreshing between pages (preloaded text blocks are merely swapped into place), it's a much more difficult type of site to engineer, but its seamless appearance is memorably elegant. Adding or subtracting company writers is quick and painless, as is editing writing samples.




Company Website | Sunrise Real Estate Corp.    



2014

The corporate website I created for Sunrise Real Estate Corp. and Voro Real Estate, two licensed real estate brokerage firms in Brooklyn, New York. The site is dynamic, and can be revised in real-time via a FileMaker database. Price changes, ad copy, listing features, and other specifications can be updated in seconds without knowledge of web coding, HTML, or technical authoring systems. The site can accommodate an unlimited number of listings in the city's 195 neighborhoods. The structure is flexible, and could be adapted to virtually any metropolitan area worldwide with minimal recoding. I was responsible for the entire site from start to finish, including technical strategy, hierarchical structure, content organization, layout, typography/creative direction, back-end integration, and site management and administration.




Photographs | Space 347    




2013

A small excerpt of hundreds of photographs I took of Space 347, a 24-room boutique hotel I operated in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The photos are a visual record of a lodging establishment that was unique in the city. I was responsible not only for the photography of the hotel, but also for its architecture, its interior design, its lighting and its day-to-day management. These photos are good examples of my aesthetic sensibility, as seen in both the framing and the content of the images.




Website | The Green Room    




2006

The basic website for a photography studio located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Again, my photography was in addition to the design, layout, lighting, and operation of the establishment, all of which I was responsible for. Unique and memorable for its green-dyed hardwood floor, the studio is still in operation.




Logo Treatments | Emirates Bahrain Investment    




2005

Treatments for a new identity for Emirates Bahrain Investment, a private bank in Bahrain. I developed two styles of logotypes—acronymic and verbatim—and demonstrated how different combinations could be used together in one design. In the second phase of development, new color schemes will be applied to the final design to form the basis of a modern branding system. These treatments represent a small sampling of the stylistic breadth (and total number) of identities and branding collateral pieces I have created over the course of my career. They also happen to fall on the conservative side of the design spectrum, in this case reflecting the milieu and disposition of the client. Viewers of this sample are invited to print it at a large size and examine the output in high resolution.




Video Example | Personal Portfolio    




2004

An example of video work I have shot and edited over the years for personal use. Video is a familiar format for me, and I am well-versed in modern editing techniques and presentation. I am profoundly comfortable shooting with minimal personnel and equipment, and assembling finished pieces at a rapid pace.




Personal Website | Self    




2003 (Design Completed)

The previous version of this website, featuring a more in-depth overview of additional projects and responsibilities. The typography and design were entirely original, and they retain a contemporary sensibility, despite being conceived more than 20 years ago, an eternity in the Internet age.