Historian. Banker. Prepress designer. Web design manager. Now a full-time freelance visual designer — and every stop on the way shows up in how I build a file.
"I learned design where a missing eighth-inch of bleed means a reprint."
My first career was banking. I managed a branch, led a four-person team, and eventually landed on the Branch Transformation team — a cross-departmental initiative tasked with analyzing and modernizing how a billion-dollar institution operated for the people inside it and the customers it served. I didn't have the vocabulary for it at the time, but that was systems thinking and user-centered process design. It shaped everything that came after.
When I transitioned into design, I joined Vision Graphics (formerly Nutis Press) as a prepress graphic designer — learning digital, screen, and offset print methods from the ground up. But I kept noticing problems with the company's web-to-print platform: poor navigation, missing product mockups, cluttered templates, no SEO. Nobody had asked me to fix them. I started working on it anyway.
Analyzing where processes broke down, where people got frustrated, and how restructuring systems could make things work better — that was my first real UX work.
I built templates. I tested platform features. I documented what was broken. Within 18 months I was promoted to Web Design Manager — not because the opportunity landed in my lap, but because I'd already been doing the work. That promotion came with a bigger challenge: converting the platform into a fully branded enterprise web store for a major beverage distributor (anonymized here as Meridian Beverage Co.), coordinating across four external vendors, implementing a Punchout-to-Ariba procurement integration, and collaborating with their internal UX team on brand compliance. We launched in May 2024.
After finishing a post-acquisition web transition contract with Vision Graphics in June 2026, I went full-time freelance — print production, packaging, direct mail, brand identity, and illustration for clients across the country.
Recent work includes a 14×48-foot billboard in Los Angeles, a USPS-compliant direct mail campaign, a 7-inch vinyl record package, a nine-variant logo production suite, and a hand-colored 1570 woodcut for UV printing. Alongside that, I've designed event materials for Epiphany Lutheran Church for three consecutive years, built brand identities and illustrated book covers for small businesses and authors, and run my own print-on-demand illustration brand at creativepalmer.com.
The enterprise B2B store I led at Vision Graphics reached $208,445 GMV across 560 purchase orders, 271 ship-to locations, and 72 distribution-center markets. That work taught me how print, platforms, and people fit together — and it's why clients get files that run the first time.
From bank-wide process design to a variable-product print catalog, I look for the structure underneath — what repeats, what breaks, and how to make it scale.
Hand illustration, brand identity, editorial layout, and press-ready production. I care about how it looks and how it actually outputs.
I ask the questions up front — sizes, stock, printer, deadline — and write down what we agreed. Clients tell me that's the part they didn't know they needed.
Billboards, direct mail, packaging and dielines, logo production suites, brand identity, book covers, and hand illustration. Clients include Airline Videos Live, Nine19 Direct, Prater Landscaping, and Epiphany Lutheran Church; 20+ commercial illustrations for Roman Atwood's Smile More brand; cover and KDP interior for Jake Brown's novel Reincarnation.
A three-month contract after the company's acquisition, carrying the web-to-print platform, client storefronts, and product templates through the transition and documenting specs and workflows for handoff.
Led the Meridian Beverage Co. enterprise storefront — branded layouts, 30+ page templates, vendor coordination, and a Punchout-to-Ariba integration — and managed product dielines and print-spec compliance across the catalog. $208,445 GMV across 560 purchase orders.
Learned digital, screen, and offset print production from the press floor up — bleeds, separations, screen-print film, and proofs — built the company's reusable product template library, and established preflight QA procedures.
Led a four-person team across operations, lending, and compliance. Served on the Branch Transformation team — piloting new equipment and processes as the bank crossed the billion-dollar threshold. Completed the Bank Management Program across 10–12 departments.
Formal design education in visual communication, typography, layout, and brand identity — completed while working full-time at VCNB Bank.
Research, analysis, and the ability to synthesize complex information into coherent narratives — skills that show up in every case study and design document I write.
Logo design, brand systems, event collateral, editorial layout, and print production — from concept through prepress and press-ready files. Now extending into motion →
Information architecture, user flows, wireframing, and conversion optimization — designing experiences that reduce friction and serve the people using them.
End-to-end WooCommerce platform management — from catalog architecture and product-page design through checkout optimization and SEO.
Columbus, Ohio area · working with clients nationwide
Booking new freelance projects now
Print production, packaging, brand identity, and illustration
2026
Booking freelance projects now — and open to the right full-time or contract role.
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