Mike Rutledge

Technical Communications | Graphic Design | Illustration

Greater Tucson Area

About

I have a passion for creating visual content which communicates the right message to the right audience. I strive to understand the viewer and craft images, words and an appealing visual look to deliver the message with absolute clarity. My career thus far has given me a wide range of experience from technical communications, to marketing, to branding and identity, to illustration. I bring a mix of abilities to the table, but the goal is always the same: understand the audience, understand the message, and then create visual content to deliver the message effectively. The practical side of this business is deadlines and efficiency are critical. Balancing the need for production without sacrificing quality is a skill. I’ve demonstrated the ability to manage a creative team with multiple projects, prioritizing work to provide quality deliverables on time. KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS - Migrated manuals for multiple product lines from individual documents to MadCap Flare. The transition to a single source solution maximized our efficiency by giving us multiple output channels from common content. We improved the consistency and accuracy of our content. - Created interactive support content for the company website, including animations and video to provide customers with enhanced material to assist in installing and using our products - Leveraged MadCap Lingo to automate our translation process. Maintaining a database of our existing translation reduced our translation time and costs. - Participated in the creation of an in-house product photo studio and learned the skills to provide quality product photos for our marketing material at a minimum of cost and time. - Created a template of presentation materials to highlight fashion trends new footwear designs. These presentations were implemented by the department to support regular seasonal sales pitches to buyers. SKILLS Document Layout Technical Writing Single Source Content Management Topic-Based Authoring Project Management Illustration Marketing Content Branding and Identity Product Photography Basic Audio Editing Basic Video Editing SOFTWARE MadCap Flare MadCap Lingo Adobe CS Adobe InDesign Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop HTML CSS CreoView MS Office Bitbucket Confluence Jira Workfront InMotion Audacity

Experience

  • Senior Technical Writer at Agency Mania Solutions
    Mar 2022 - Present · 4 yrs 5 mos

  • Technical Writer at Scantron
    Oct 2021 - Jan 2022 · 4 mos

  • Senior Technical Communications Specialist at The Chamberlain Group, Inc.
    Jun 2010 - Jul 2021 · 11 yrs 2 mos

    Wrote, designed, illustrated, product manuals and other support documents for print and digital.

  • Graphic Designer at Elan-Polo, Inc.
    Mar 2005 - Feb 2010 · 5 yrs