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Expert is an illustrator and graphic artist in Fremont, California. Expert’s core talent is organizing and visualizing information. He strives for images that are clear and obvious as well as attention-getting and creative.

Expert has been an independent contractor since 1985. He began his career as an illustrator and graphic designer at several advertising agencies in the San Francisco Bay area. His last position was art director at Tom Jones Advertising in Mountain View, Calif. As a freelance artist for over 25 years, Expert has served many clients, large and small. Much of the work appears in print, but numerous images have been created for websites or PowerPoint.

Expert’s favorite tools are Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop, but he is also proficient in a full range of traditional media.

In the area of technical illustration, the following are typical projects:
-- Thirty-eight illustrations and cover for The Railroad Handbook, a technical report by the Electric Power Research Institute.
-- Fifty-five illustrations for the Genie Excellerator user’s manual, Overhead Door Corp.
-- Instructive and cautionary label illustrations for core router, Cisco Systems.
-- Concept illustrations for Westinghouse product development and NASA Ames Research Center.
-- Illustrations for numerous user's manuals, Davis Instruments, weather division.
-- Medical textbook illustrations, Simon and Schuster.
-- Illustrations for student testing, McGraw Hill.
-- Research area booths and permanent facilities display graphics, Roche Bioscience.
-- Concept sketches for Flash animation series used in online executive education, Pensare Corp.

Expert is a pleasure to work with and commited to client satisfaction...better yet, exceeding expectations!

Label designs for Cisco Systems in San Jose (2010). Cisco is building their biggest product ever, a core router for phone and internet companies. The machine is the size of a refrigerator and handles an amazing throughput of information.

Working as a subcontractor through an industrial design firm, Vavni, Expert produced artwork and illustrations for the over 70 labels that go on the product. These included images for cautions and step-by-step maintenance procedures.

Steve Worden, leading the label team at Vavni, said this about Expert's approach: "You really hit it over the fence with this art. Very powerful." "I thought you'd do a great job on this, but you exceede everyone's expectations. Thanks for all your hard work." At the first review meeting, Marvin Mylock of Cisco said: "Very good stuff. Looks really nice." Then he added, "These illustrations stand alone, without explanatory text. That's what we're trying to do more and more; otherwise you need to translate everything into six languages." And Expert's art has been approved without revision by Louis Arreola, Cisco's corporate brand identity specialist.

Expert's undelying concept was to always show the right way to handle the equipment, never X'd out errors. And he wanted the effect to be more lively, so hands are always pictured performing the tasks. The rendering style attempts to preserve some of the freshness of the initial layout sketches, including dotted lines left over from constructing the perspective space.Illustrations and cover for The Railroad Handbook (2003), a technical report by the Electric Power Research Institute. Expert worked from engineers’ sketches, computer plots, and reference photos to produce over 35 full-color plates. Comment by Brian Kramer, the project manager: “Some of these concepts (such as radiation patterns) are complicated and have never been illustrated in three dimensions before, to my knowledge. You made them look real—and beautiful.”For the Genie Excellerator user’s manual, Overhead Door Corp. (2002), Expert was part of a team hired to redo the existing manual, which used photographs taken at the factory to illustrate the garage door opener’s installation. This being one of the most complicated products a consumer would attempt to install themselves, chances for confusion were many. The rate of returns to the factory were high—and costly. After Expert’s crisp and clean Illustrator treatment, the problem was solved. The staff at Genie was very impressed and made hardly any changes to Expert’s initial layouts (they drove the copywriter crazy with reworks, however). Expert illustrated and designed facility graphics and research progress booths, Roche Pharmaceuticals (2002). This project was one of Expert’s greatest success stories. The Roche corporate board, based in Switzerland, was considering closing the Palo Alto campus. Although major discoveries such as Advil had been made there, this was the most expensive of their five research sites to operate. So the Swiss decided to pay the site their first and only visit. The governor of California would be part of a delegation joining them on the tour. Expert’s job: (1) design and produce museum-grade, permanent graphics for the hallway and meeting room and (2) create a temporary booth-type display for each of the five “therapy areas,” showing the latest advancements and possibilities. There were only two months to achieve this. For the graphics, Expert illustrated a large mural and several posters of past accomplishments of this research facility. The booths followed a unified graphical theme highlighting each area of R&D. These ended up being standard tradeshow booths, since Expert’s initial idea of having the material suspended by fishing line to give the feeling of “out of thin air” was too unconventional for some on the public affairs staff. At length, all was ready and the board of directors arrived. Barbara Wesley, a senior associate, reported: “The board loved everything! They decided to continue funding our campus! And the scientists liked your displays so much that they carried them off to their offices!”
P.S. Expert also illustrated and produced the PowerPoint that the facility director presented that fateful day. He was still supplying input the night before!