Work Experience »  Anthony Franze

Farmers Insurance  –  Woodland Hills, CA  –  ( 6/2014 - 6/2019 )

  • Sr. Web Designer/Front-end Developer
  • OVERVIEW => Visual design, UI design, front-end development, & maintenance on the Farmers Insurance Agency Dashboard intranet which delivers content to 50,000+ Farmers agents and district managers.
  • MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS
    • DESIGNED A REVOLUTIONARY AGENCY DASHBOARD PAGE LAYOUT: with exciting graphics and intuitive UI which has engaged users and brought a major increase in traffic to the site from agents and district managers and has been adopted for major landing pages
    • DESIGNED THE LOGO FOR A TOP COMPANY INITIATIVE: which has brought visual excitement and consistency on signage and websites throughout the company for one of the company's major initiatives
    • DESIGNED & CODED AN ONLINE GAME: which has delivered crucial information to agents in a fun, interactive way in order to educate them on brand compliance
    • DESIGNED A WEB PAGE WIDGET: to intuitively show a step-by-step process, which has been adopted for major landing pages
  • HTML, CSS, & JAVASCRIPT (hand-coded with Dreamweaver)
    • HTML: hand-coding of new web page layouts and maintenance/update of existing pages
    • CSS: hand-coding of layout & text styling on new and existing web pages
    • JAVASCRIPT: function implementation and modification
  • GRAPHICS:  PHOTOSHOP, ILLUSTRATOR, FIREWORKS
    • PHOTOSHOP: Page layouts/design mockups, logo design, image compositing, retouching, treatment, effects, re-sizing, re-sampling, and cropping
    • ILLUSTRATOR: Creation of pull-up banners, logos, and signs for display at agent & district manager conventions, as well as to create a buzz at the home office
    • FIREWORKS: image optimization
  • SHAREPOINT: Collaboration/Team Sites
    • Adding, deleting, moving, and editing web parts
    • Adding content: documents, videos, events, etc.
    • Adding and managing Categories
    • Adding Document Libraries and filtering by certain Categories
    • Featuring a video in the Media Web Part
    • Adding text and images
    • Creating permission groups

Guitar Center, Inc.  –  Westlake Village, CA  –  ( 4/2006 - 1/2014 )

  • LMS (Saba) Website Admin & Front End Developer - ( 7/2009 - 1/2014 )
  • OVERVIEW => Saba LMS Administration & front-end development for Guitar Center's e-Learning Department which produces learning content and tracks learning progress for Learners within Guitar Center's and Musician's Friend's corporate offices, distribution centers, and 200+ Guitar Center retail stores.
  • MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS
    • CREATED, HAND-CODED, AND MAINTAINED: Guitar Center's interacive web-based Regional/Distric/Store Map
    • CREATED, HAND-CODED, AND MAINTAINED: online forms which provided data from SME's for the construction of the eLearning Department's learning modules
    • FIXED THE DATA FEED: I discovered that the data feed to the LMS was not working correctly. I got the data feed running smoothly and accurately. This drastically lowered the volume of calls to our Help Desk, it drastically increased the data-integrity of our entire e-Learning Department, and it eased concerns of our Learners in the Field.
    • INSTITUTED DATA FEED RECONCILIATION PROCESS: I devised a daily data feed reconciliation process to immediately identify any problems with our various data feeds flowing into the LMS (Saba). This allows any data feed problems to be fixed quickly and keeps our data as accurate as possible.
    • INTEGRATED OTHER COMPANIES' DATA INTO OUR LMS ENVIRONMENT: I managed the technical aspect of the data integration of two Guitar-Center-owned companies ("Musician's Friend" and "Music & Arts Centers") into our prior Guitar Center-only LMS environment.
    • CERTIFICATION RE-CREATION & CLEAN-UP: I devised a certification build-strategy and certification naming convention to provide more accurate information and more understandable reporting in the LMS system.
  • SABA LMS ADMINISTRATION
    • New-user account setup
    • Administration of extra rights and privileges to various users
    • Uploading of Learning Module Content to Content Repository
    • Organization of Content Repository
    • Course creation & attachment of appropriate Learning Content
    • Certification Plan creation
    • Configured automatic deployment of appropriate Learning Modules to appropriate subsets of Learners
    • Optimization of User Interface design
    • LMS Ad Hoc Report Creation
    • Ongoing communication with SABA Support technicians to resolve LMS issues
    • Ongoing communication with the Learners in the field to facilitate their ease of site navigation and their ultimate certification
    • Coordination with I.T. to set up daily data feeds in order to automatically populate the LMS with accurate, up-to-date company/employee data
    • Ongoing analysis and resolution of problems with daily data feeds
    • Integration of online video tutorials (non-accredited assets) into our Learning Management System
  • HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT (all hand-coded with Homesite)
    • Creation, development, and maintenance of Guitar Center's web-based Regional/Distric/Store Interacive Map
    • Development and maintenance of custom code integrated into the LMS which displays various study guides for Learners
    • Development and maintenance of custom code integrated into the LMS which displays a FAQ Section with online video tutorials
  • GRAPHICS:  PHOTOSHOP & FIREWORKS
    • Creation, re-touching, sizing, and web optimization of graphics for use on our LMS
  • LECTORA PRO PUBLISHING SUITE
    • Assembly of Learning Content containing Flash animations and tests/assessments
    • Publishing of final e-Learning Content Modules to SCORM packages for use in our LMS
  • CAMTASIA
    • Creation of online video tutorials to help Learners navigate the LMS
    • Publishing video tutorials for optimal performance over the web
  • MS-EXCEL
    • Ongoing Excel spreadsheet analyses on LMS data

  • Front-End Web Developer/Designer - ( 4/2006 - 7/2009 )
  • OVERVIEW => Maintenance, design, production, and development of 15+ company-owned web sites utilizing HTML (hand-coded with Homesite), CSS, Javascript, Sharepoint, Coldfusion, MySQL, Flash, Photoshop, Fireworks. [ View Anthony's Web Portfolio on this site ]
  • SHAREPOINT CUSTOMIZATION & UTILIZATION
    • Designed AND customized the look & feel of Guitar Center's company-wide Sharepoint intranet portal (sole designer & front-end developer) using a custom alternate stylesheet and by modifying the underlying HTML structure of the "master page" with Homesite
    • Implemented various custom Sharepoint page designs using the "Content Editor Web Part"
    • Designed, coded, and integrated a custom, xml-driven Flash Video player AND a custom, xml-driven Flash SWF player for use on the company�s Sharepoint Portal environment
    • Authored web pages in the Sharepoint environmnent utilizing the built-in content-management system
    • Created image & document libraries
    • Added web part instances of image and document libraries to various pages
    • Created custom views on web part instances
    • Created a step-by-step, 50+ page, "how-to" manual for Sharepoint "content contributors" to learn various tasks to add content to their respective sections on the Sharepoint intranet portal.
    • Trained various co-workers on how to perform basic page-authoring in the Sharepoint environment
    • Created a Sharepoint portal Style Guide outlining various design best-practices in order to maintain a consistent look & feel across the portal
    • Gained an understanding of the different functions between: 1) the Sharepoint Intranet Portal  
      2) Sharepoint Team/Project/Collaboration Sites   3) Sharepoint "My Sites"
  • HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT, & COLDFUSION (hand-coded with Homesite)
  • HTML & CSS (cascading style sheets)
    • HTML: hand-coding of tables, frames, forms, hyperlinks, lists, text, etc.
    • HTML/CSS: semantic mark-up and separation of content vs. presentation on various sites
    • CSS: understanding of cross-browser issues/limitations and ability to implement workarounds
    • CSS: awareness of DOCTYPE declarations to maintain "standards mode" vs. "quirks mode"
    • CSS: understanding of "the box model" and IE's misinterpretation of it
    • CSS: utilization of absolute, relative, float, and document-flow positioning models
    • CSS: utilization of external, embedded, and inline styles
    • CSS: utilization of id, class, type, and descendant selectors
    • CSS: utilization of specificity, inheritance, and cascade to achieve desired effects
    • CSS: utilization of table-less layouts on various pages across several sites
    • CSS: utilization of .PNG images, even in older versions of IE
    • CSS: utilization of IE conditional comments
    • CSS: utilization of background images
  • COLDFUSION
    • Use of conditional statements on most sites
    • Use of header and footer includes
    • Variables and variable scoping
    • Utilization of page redirection, switch statements, and arrays
    • Created a random image generator to display a different products upon page refresh
    • Database connectivity & utilization of queried data to drive the product database on www.prolinestands.com
  • PHOTOSHOP
    • Designed the look and feel of the "GC Nation", the company's Sharepoint Intranet Portal (MOSS 2007)
    • Creation of many page layouts/design mockups on several sites
    • Creation of design elements, buttons, etc.
    • Creation of all weekly "hero" image deals (over the course of several months) on www.guitarcenter.com
    • Image compositing, graphic treatments and effects
    • Image retouching, re-sizing, re-sampling, and cropping
  • JAVASCRIPT
    • Form validation scripting; popup window scripting
    • Mouseover/Rollover script implementation
    • Various other script implementations, modifications, and enhancements
  • MySQL
  • FLASH
  • FLASH VIDEO ( .flv )
    • Designed, coded, and integrated a custom, xml-driven Flash Video player for use on the company�s Sharepoint Portal environment
    • Encoded FLVs from Quicktime movies for use with the media player on www.guitarcenter.com
  • FIREWORKS
    • FIREWORKS: design mockup slicing; image optimization

Maximus, Inc.  –  Chicago, IL  –  ( 8/2005 - 8/2006 )

  • Front-End Web Designer/Developer
  • OVERVIEW => web design, web graphics production, and fron-end HTML development (hand-coding) for various Maximus, Inc. software applications (CEM, ERS, & WebSpace) as a remote contractor in Los Angeles. [ View Anthony's Web Portfolio on this site ]
  • HTML, CSS, & JAVASCRIPT (hand-coded with Homesite)
    • HTML: hand-coding of new web page layouts
    • CSS: text & link formatting
    • JAVASCRIPT: rollover/image-swap script implementation; scripting for browswer window manipulation and alert boxes
  • GRAPHICS:  PHOTOSHOP, FIREWORKS, FLASH
    • PHOTOSHOP: Logo creation (for CEM, ERS, & WebSpace), page layout/design mockups, image compositing, retouching, treatment, effects, re-sizing, re-sampling, and cropping
    • FIREWORKS: design mockup slicing; image optimization
    • FLASH: design & production of Flash animation for HED web site
    • Image sourcing for conveyance of appropriate message within graphical elements

Herbalife, International  –  Century City, CA  –  ( 1/2004 - 8/2005 )

  • Front-End Web Designer/Developer
  • OVERVIEW => 1 of 3 total members of the "Web Production Design Team" within Herbalife's Internet Marketing Department. Creation and design of web assets and web pages for the company's corporate web sites. [ View Anthony's Web Portfolio on this site ]
  • HTML, CSS, & JAVASCRIPT (hand-coded with Homesite)
    • HTML: hand-coding of new web page layouts
    • CSS: text & link formatting
    • JAVASCRIPT: rollover/image-swap script implementation; scripting for browswer window manipulation and alert boxes
    • JAVASCRIPT: application development for online, printable business cards for independent distributors
    • Strategic slicing of Photoshop design mock-ups for most-efficient HTML layouts
    • Design & production of HTML e-mails for distributor communication
    • Web design and HTML development of kiosk application used at Extravaganza 2004 and ShapeWorks Distributor Center at WestSide Pavilion
    • Web design and HTML/Javascript development of pop-up application for use by distributors to acquire approved images for use on their personal web sites
  • GRAPHICS:  PHOTOSHOP & FIREWORKS
    • PHOTOSHOP: Logo creation, page layout/design mockups, image compositing, retouching, treatment, effects, re-sizing, re-sampling, and cropping
    • FIREWORKS: design mockup slicing; image optimization
    • Image treatment, re-size, crop, and optimization of product catalog images
    • Image design and creation for Monthly featured-product pushes
    • Design & production of Rich E-mails for distributor communication
    • Design, production, and optimization of "before & after" testimonial images
    • Home page pop-up image design and production for myHerbalife
    • Image sourcing for use in various sections on Herbalife, MyHerbalife, and legacy web sites
    • Image treatment, sizing, and optimization for pictures taken at all distributor events
    • Creation of e-Learning Module using Lectora Professional Publishing Suite
  • OTHER PROJECTS
    • Creation of e-Learning Module using Lectora Professional Publishing Suite

Antman Design  –  Woodland Hills, CA  –  ( 9/2001 - 1/2004 )

  • Front-End Web Producer/Designer/Developer
  • OVERVIEW => Production, design, and development of several web sites. [ View Anthony's Web Portfolio on this site ]
  • HTML, CSS, & JAVASCRIPT (hand-coded with Homesite)
    • HTML: hand-coding of web sites
    • CSS: text formatting
    • JAVASCRIPT: rollover/image-swap script implementation; scripting for browser window manipulation and alert boxes
  • GRAPHICS:  PHOTOSHOP, FIREWORKS, FLASH
    • PHOTOSHOP: creation of site design mockups, logos, and graphic elements
    • FIREWORKS: PSD mockup slicing; image compression & optimization
    • FLASH: various Flash movies, including "The Adventures of FoosManchu."

Digital Insight  –  Calabasas, CA  –  ( 3/2000 - 9/2001 )

  • Web Author
  • OVERVIEW => Timely update and maintenance of HTML (hand-coded with Homesite), Javascript, graphics, and content for 50+ websites, as well as the creation and development of additional pages as needed [ View Anthony's Web Portfolio on this site ]
  • HTML (hand-coded with Homesite)
    • Creation and/or re-design of tables, forms, and content to maintain integrity of existing page layout
    • Creation and/or re-design of new page layouts
    • Creation and update of hyperlinks: internal, external, and jump links
    • Optimization of HTML for cross-browser compatibility and consistency
    • Optimization of HTML for different monitor resolutions
  • JAVASCRIPT (hand-coded with Homesite)
    • Integration of existing image-swapping, scrolling text, and other scripts for use in new pages
    • Editing of existing scripts to accommodate new functionality and maintain design integrity as new content and graphics are introduced
    • Scripting for alert boxes, pop-up browser windows, and changing browser locations
    • Code implementaion via inline scripting, page embedding, and external Javascript file inclusion
  • GRAPHICS:  PHOTOSHOP & FIREWORKS
    • PHOTOSHOP: creation of rollover graphics, transparent GIF's, text with drop shadows, layer management, filters, gradients, and effects
    • FIREWORKS: image compression/optimization; image slicing for quick page loading

Prior Accounting / Financial Experience –  Los Angeles & Chicago

  • SONY PICTURES - (Los Angeles) - Financial Analyst - ( 04/99 to 03/2000 )
  • OAKWOOD WORLDWIDE - (Los Angeles) - Staff Accountant - ( 10/96 to 8/98 )
  • 20th CENTURY FOX - (Los Angeles) - Billing Analyst - ( 11/93 to 9/95 )
  • BAKER, FENTRESS & CO. - (Chicago) - Staff Accountant - ( 04/89 to 10/91 )