Brent Akamine
213.254.8574

Portfolio:  brentakamine.com
brent.akamine@gmail.com

QUALIFICATIONS:

I have the experience of co-founding a media design service company that I ran for five and a half years, mixed with working at a top tier agency and also being a part of a web start up from inception through acquisition.  I am extremely interested in helping an organization grow to it’s potential through a great design process and buildiing user-centric consumer internet and mobile products.

EDUCATION:

1999-2003 B.A. Fine Arts (School of Fine Arts with a focus on Graphic Design), University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)

1996-1999 Graduate, Punahou School (Honolulu, HI)

EXPERIENCE:

2010-Current, Visual Designer / Art Director, Shopnation Inc.
Created concepts for new products, wireframes for features and visual design mockups.  Designed the shopping engine current and new iterations, social visual bookmarking product, email templates, and facebook app. Created on-brand partner products built on top of our shopping platform.

2008-2010, Visual Designer, Huge Inc.
Worked within the unique user focused process of a top tier global digital agency.   Worked on projects for Mattel, Disney (Toontown.com), Flip, Kelly Blue Book, Super Pages, Samsung, concepts for Starwars.com, Sigma Aldrich, Google inc.

2008-2010 Co-Founder, 365hangers.com
Designed the original concepts and user interface.  Organized a small team to customize the e-commerce platform to support weekly product updates.  Organized original product shoots and data integration from our warehouse source of over 1 million products.

2009-Current, Co-Founder, Crushee.com
“A Lighthearted Social Crushing for adorable people.”  Designed user interface, and brand.  Put together a small engineering team to create a Ruby on Rails, prototype.

2003-2008, Co-Founder, Hobokenwest Digital Media
Raised the seed capital. Developed over 400 DVD, Blu-Ray multimedia titles for major film studios and smaller distribution houses. Our partial client list included Fox Home Entertainment, Vivendi Universal (Vivendi Entertainment), Universal Music, Toyota USA, Paul Mitchell schools, MGM, Lions Gate Home Video, and Newline Cinema.

2002-2003 DVD Project Manager, DVS Intelestream (post production)
Managed DVD & multimedia projects for MGM, Toyota USA, Sony BMG.

2001-2002 PR & Marketing Assistant, Square Pictures / Sony Pictures Entertainment
Public Relations & Marketing assistant Final Fantasy The Spirits Within feature film. Worked with the promotions, marketing, public relations, EPK dept. to organize planning meetings for press junkets, and various conventions such as Siggraph, and E3.

Technical Skills:
I am extremely proficient on PC and Mac Systems, the Adobe suite related to print, web and media design, and video.