Our Company
Maurer Website Design — a division of Maurer Graphics LLC — offers professional graphic design solutions for website design and programming since 1988. Conveniently located “across the bridge” from New York City, our client base originally consisted of the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. After 20 years in the industry, our clientele now span the nation from Chicago, Florida, Texas and California as well as internationally in the UK and Canada.
We have designed and developed websites for a variety of clients:
- Auction
- Child Focused (including Retail)
- Education / University / Government
- Entertainment / Music / Film
- Financial / Banking / Insurance
- Hotel / Motel / Lodging
- Matchmaking / Dating / Jobs
- News Media / Informational Content
- Non-Profit / Religious Organizations
- Personal / Portfolio / Gallery
- Professional Services (Doctors / Lawyers / CPAs / Others)
- Real Estate Brokers
- Restaurants
- Retail-Business Focused (B2B)
- Retail-Consumer Focused (B2C)
- Sports/Recreation/Leisure
- Trade Associations/Union
- Other
Maurer Website Design offers turnkey solutions to all campaign strategies and graphic design requirements by featuring:
- Agency-quality deliverables with personalized service
- Competitive prices that fit your budget
- Fast turnaround times based on your schedule
Consulting directly with clients to design their projects as envisioned with consistent branding targeted for your demographic. Developing “outside-the-box” creative concepts into elegant designs with stunning imagery, cutting-edge typography and innovative color theory as displayed in an award-winning portfolio. Delivering original ideas and customized designs — never a cookie-cutter template!
Feel confident that we will be your full-service consultant on the scope of the project — from initial conception through final launch — and hopefully, beyond. Call 201.414.0102, e-mail us or fill out our Contact Us form for a FREE consultation and quote.
Summary of Qualifications
Our Creative Director Melissa Castagne is a senior level web designer and programmer with 21 years managerial experience in the industry who studied Graphic Design & Advertising as well as attended industry-specific workshops with demonstrated strengths in Multimedia Design:
- Innovate and creative thinker — proven drive, energy & passion for each project meeting challenges with imaginative & constructive resourcefulness.
- World-class problem solving and execution skills — investigate, discover & learn new techniques and/or focus to come out with pragmatic solutions to problems.
- Dedicated work ethic —ability to perform independently, thrive in a fast-pace environment & juggle multiple priorities & heavy workload with a constructive, positive attitude.
- Proven time management skills — accountability for meeting deadlines while displaying initiative by being self- motivating & taking independent actions with calculated risks.
- Strong interpersonal skills — dedication & inquisitiveness combined with team-orientated ability to extract results by working collaboratively with others, & communicating effectively & positively.
- Effectively manage graphic design projects and production processes — a sharp attention to details, high organization & a keen eye for consistency of the existing brand.
- Formal creative arts training — with a degree in Graphic Design & Advertising for graphic design, layout, typography, color theory & interactive design combined with 20+ years experience in the industry.
- Good understanding of graphic design for multimedia — web usability principles, capabilities of different platforms/browsers & design constraints on the web.
- Expert knowledge in the latest software.
Business Experience
Creative Director Melissa Castagne’s Business Experience:
Maurer Graphics, Tappan, NY:
Owner / Creative Director, http://maurergraphics.com, http://maurerwebsitedesign.com and http://castagnegraphics.com, 2004-present
- Founded and manage a successful graphic design agency for print and internet clients providing turnkey solutions by acting as a full-service consultant throughout the scope of the project and creating concepts into effective corporate materials as they envision by using elegant designs with stunning imagery, cutting-edge typography and innovative color theory.
- Develop Internet and intranet sites to reflect the organization’s goals and identity using strong knowledge of web strategy, site architecture, copy / design integration and user-interface design for the front-end combined with leveraging innovative technology and functionality for programming of the back-end.
- Print projects include: Billboard & poster display, book covers, booklets, bookmarks, bumper stickers, calendars, catalogs, CD-ROM covers / jewel inserts / sleeves, club card flyers, decals, die cut stickers, door hangers, event tickets, flyers, folded cards, greeting cards, invitations, labels, menus, notepads, packaging, panel cards, product design, product hang tags, product identity, rack cards, response cards, signage, stickers, tickets and wine labels.
- Internet projects include: banner ads & icons, e-mail & RSS, e-mail design, flash & web animation, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, testing & QA, usability testing, user experience design, web 2.0, web design, web development and web landing pages.
Acxiom, New York, NY:
Creative Services Manager, 2001-2004
- Designed winning Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs and direct mail campaigns based on strategic database marketing ensuring objectives are executed in a manner that most complements the established brand by creating powerful messages and strong visuals that sell a product or a service to the targeted demographic audience for high-end retail and financial clientele.
- Collaborated with account executives for their creative services offerings to acquire new business by preparing proposals, presenting comps at on-site sales pitches and attending conference calls to prospective customers.
- Projects included: Annual reports, banners, brochures, business cards, direct mail pieces, envelopes, folders, ID badges, identity packages, letterhead, logos, mailers, marketing communications / coordination / plans, pocket folders, postcards, PowerPoint presentation, presentation folders, sales data sheets, stationery, trade show banners and tri-fold brochures.
Praxis Press, New York, NY
Art Director, 2000
Torre Lazur, Parsippany, NJ:
Senior Art Director, 2000
- Conceptualized advertising strategies, maintained on-going campaigns and presented ad pitches for pharmaceutical clients by combining a sophisticated knowledge of marketing, sales and advertising with strong design and production skills into creative concepts to attract attention and increase sales while strengthening the established branding.
- Supervised support personnel consisting of junior art directors, production artists, illustrators and photo editors.
- Scouted locations, cast models and directed photography shoots.
- Projects included: Advertising concepts, advertising management, counter cards, magazine ads, newspaper ads, print ads, product / brand management, promotional materials and table tents.
Cahners Travel Group, Secaucus, NJ:
Art Director, Travel Weekly Custom Publishing, 1994-2000
- Customized travel-destination publications, or “advertorials,” to set the client apart from their competition while communicating their corporate vision by presenting the information visually, so it is appealing, professional and organized from conception through final production of print-ready files using QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign.
- Trained and supervised a staff consisting of junior designers, a photo editor and freelance artists; hired photographers; and contracted illustrators while juggling multiple projects under tight production deadlines within budget.
- Prepared comps to be used by the sales and the marketing departments for prospective clients.
- Projects included: Advertorials, consumer magazines, custom publishing, layout / desktop publishing, illustration, magazines, newsletters, page layout, photo editing, publication production and tabloid magazines.
Additional Relevant Experience:
Print Production and Creative positions at American Payroll Association, Aquent Partners, BMT Communications, KBC Publishing & Expositions, Marvel Comics, Research Institute of America, Schnell Publishing, Sun America and Ziff Davis Publishing, 1988-1994
Creative Director Melissa Castagne’s Education and Training:
- Motion Over Time, New York, NY:
Attended “Web Development Workshop” and “Multimedia and Shockwave Workshop using Director,” 2000 - The New School, New York, NY:
Attended HTML class, “World Wide Web Page Design and Construction,” 1998 - Parsons School Of Design, New York, NY:
AAS: Graphic Design and Advertising, 1987-1989 - University Of Arizona, Tucson, AZ:
BA: Majored in Anthropology, Minored in Psychology, 1983-1987
Technical Fluency
The Maurer Website Design team has technical fluency in the most popular print and web software applications:
Hardware
Proficient primarily on Macintosh OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard with working knowledge of PC operating system
Print design and production software
QuarkXPress 9, Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium (Adobe InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver and Acrobat 9 Pro) and Microsoft Office:mac 2009 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage).
Multimedia applications and languages
Adobe Creative Suite 5 Web Premium (Dreamweaver, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Fireworks and Acrobat 9 Pro) as well as fluency in markup languages (HTML / XHTML / XML), style sheet language (Cascading Style Sheets [CSS]), client-side scripting (JavaScript), server-side scripting (PHP), database technology (MySQL) and multimedia technology (Flash Professional).
Open source Content Management System (CMS) software
WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and Mambo.
Awards
The Maurer Website Design team has won many prestigious awards for their print and multimedia designs:
- Adrian Award for the “New Jersey Planner,” 1998
- Adrian Award for the “1998 U.S. Travel Agency Survey,” 1998
- “The Médaille d’Or” Website Award for gomez.org, 1998
- The Award for Excellence presented by the “Lower Hudson Conference of Historic Agencies and Museums” for gomez.org, 1998
- Listed as one of the “50 Great Museum Websites” by museumstuff.com for gomez.org, 1998
- Folio Award for the “1998 U.S. Travel Agency Survey,” 1998
- Cahners Medal of Excellence for the “1998 U.S. Travel Agency Survey,” 1999
- Nominated for inclusion in the “Global Museum Web Awards 2001” for gomez.org, 2001
- TransUnion’s “MVP” Award, 2001
- Winner of the Golden Web Awards for maurergraphics.com, 2004
- The New York City Metro Award by newyorkcitymetro.com for gomez.org, 2004
- The New York City Metro Award by newyorkcitymetro.com for maurergraphics.com, 2004
- Designated as a Top 10 Designer of 2009 for catalog design with the “2009 PrintRunner Designer Award,” 2009
