Darren Kurre

Visionary creative leader, strategic planner, and expert designer with extensive experience managing varied projects from conceptualization to implementation. Ability to positively impact the profitability and performance of creatives, branding, and products through efficient orchestration of resources, skillful design, and productive internal/external business relationships. Align diverse client needs with budget, design, and corporate constraints. Keen eye for emerging trends and opportunity development in new and existing markets. Effectively manage projects and optimize procedures to reduce costs and innovate final products. Significant strengths in creating competitive corporate advantage.

Intellectual video and audio course provider led by the world's best professors and experts in diverse fields designed to meet the powerful demand for lifelong learning.

Strategize, design and implement usability improvements and design solutions for online sales and corporate marketing initiatives. Monitor creative and development teams in all usability improvement implementations. Direct outsourced creative efforts to insure consistent user experiences across all channels of digital access.

» Redesigned The Great Courses website(s) and user experience to bring forth a more immersive, interactive, engaging and rewarding experience to the consumer while allowing for easier updates and content management on the company side through the integration of the Magento framework.

» Designed and updated all new graphical interface elements from The Great Courses mobile, tablet and OTT apps.

» Directed and designed the UI/UX for Wondrium.com.

» Creative lead for various integrated campaigns resulting in widespread and consistent exposure and experiences with The Great Courses and Wondrium brands and product lines across all channels.

» Ongoing updates and designs for sales (The Great Courses) and subscription (Wondrium) digital advertising initiatives resulting in significant lift in conversion and purchases.

» Continued email campaign design initiatives resulting in significant increases in conversion while continuing to eclipse the “Top Performing Email Campaign(s)” in company history.

» Conceptualized and designed the Holiday Gift Guide resulting in a 1650% lift in holiday sales.

Envictus was a social entrepreneurship focused on college and career readiness, helping clients answer the central question “What should I do with my life?” through navigation programs and services.

As creative director, I Strategized, planned, and implemented creative solutions and engaging user experiences for all web initiatives, apps and products. Monitored and led all creative implementations of development team, branding initiatives and marketing. Oversight and creative direction for all corporate and product initiatives to ensure brand impact and consistency of deliverables across all media.

» Led all aspects of UX/UI design for corporate website and SaaS product - Navigation101 for desktop and mobile.

» Revitalized entire corporate brand, website and flagship product to create a more engaging and immersive experience that evoked a more sophisticated online presence while maintaining a consistent, professional brand  across all channels and to the K-12 product market across the US.

» Significantly increased sales with additional state public school systems and districts adopting the reimagined flagship product, Navigation 101, through thoughtful and impactful UI/UX design for both desktop and mobile.

» Substantially reduced corporate expenditures by reclaiming previously outsourced projects and bringing  them in-house to be designed, directed and implemented.

» Set the pace for production and facilitated an environment that enabled creatives and developers to work together efficiently through daily/weekly scrum, production and stakeholder meetings. Promoted a positive team atmosphere of both accountability and accomplishment after joining when morale was low.

Award-winning design and marketing agency, providing best-in-class measurable full-service branding, marketing, creative, and interactive solutions for small, mid-sized and large organizations alike.

» Orchestrated full life-cycle project management, from discovery and initial design of all creative media through to successful implementation. Coordinated creative and development teams. Monitored visual integrity and accurate translation of all digital UI/UX initiatives into code to meet (and often exceed) client objectives and expectations.

» Involved in all aspects of the design process from meeting with clients and key stakeholders to hiring and strategizing/directing all internal/external design staff, vendors, design initiatives and user experiences.

» Designed and directed the creation of various brand elements and campaigns including logos, websites, marketing collateral, trade show exhibits, kiosks videos/animations/motion graphics and omni ads for a wide variety of clients.

» Collaborated with marketing and copywriting teams to ensure brand consistency across various media.

» Analyzed internal and client web trends using Google Analytics and Crazy Egg to help evaluate, inform and improve web effectiveness and ROI both internally and for clients.

» Recognized as SME in re-vitalizing brands for diverse clients and projects with unique ability to increase the bottom line consistently by utilizing and implementing on-and-offline techniques and know-how.

» Designed internal CVI (Corporate Visual Identity) and all related branding elements including the corporate stationery,  website, videos, exhibits among others to effectively maximize brand awareness across multiple touch points and media.

» Co-conceptualized and led design of a proprietary online project management/approval system, automating a manual project management system into Saas system, allowing real-time access to project status and assets for staff and clients alike.

Career Rewards was a peer-to-peer recruiting cooperative using internet referral-based programs to identify and retain high-quality staff through rewards based incentives.

» Directed all levels of creative vision related to web implementation projects. Collaborated with Marketing Director and Development Team to strategize and design a full spectrum of initiatives including web applications and experiences as well as all corporate branding, marketing and advertising initiatives (both print and digital).

» Led all aspects of UI/UX design for both corporate website and SaaS products (Career Rewards + Team Rewards)

» Executed strategic thinking and creative problem solving as well as final quality control in all design aspects including  brand development, web design, SaaS product design, interactive media, marketing strategies (digital + print), and  UI/UX design.

Redesigned corporate website and managed creative design projects from initial design and engineering of 3D exhibit models/floor plans to delivery of custom trade show displays for varied clientele. Worked with a diverse client base from small businesses and government entities to Fortune 500 companies to create engaging exhibit spaces and experiences.
Supported and led internal digital and print-based marketing initiatives.

» Redesigned the company website to be more sophisticated, modern and usable resulting in a dramatic increase of web-based customer acquisition and sales from previous years.

» Conceptualized the company's first digital marketing and ad campaign dramatically increasing the customer base, while also dramatically reducing the previous CPA and conversion times which were previously only achieved through print ads, costly trade events, cold calls and hard selling by an internal sales team.

» Designed small, medium and large-scale trade show exhibits and experiences for companies across a multitude of business sectors, non-profit organizations and government agencies.

» Engineered custom 3D exhibit models and floor plans for clients that required and recreated full-scale exhibit murals and artwork for output based upon detailed 10th-scale exhibit model renderings.

» Increased engagement, exposure and sales for clients through conceptualization and design of multiple interactive, branding and marketing campaigns that accompanied the exhibit experience.

» Recognized consistently for creative efforts with several “Best in Show” awards at various trade show exhibitions. 2-time recipient of the TS2 Expo Best of Show Award - (TS2 Expo was one of the trade show industry's premier destinations for exhibit and event marketing specialists).