Dreamweaver, Flash, blogs, social networking, HTML code, HTML editors, CSS, Javascript via Dreamweaver, search engine optimization, Photoshop, Gimp, Illustrator, Corel Draw, e-commerce, FrontPage, Acrobat, InDesign, Quark Xpress, FTP software, MS Office

Spanish, tabletop photography, training

First published at age 17 as a winner of a national writing contest, Patty has gone on to a 31-year career in media production. She received a degree in the field from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1981 while working summers as a newspaper reporter. She has written and directed a weekly television show and commercials for television and radio. She has designed marketing plans for ad agency clients, using an in-depth knowledge of ratings and what messages work. Patty has helped produce well over a thousand books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and brochures for virtually every industry, with extensive work in the federal government. Her experience and knowledge of media technology has allowed her to set up media production departments in publishing companies and technical firms. She has helped create presentations for Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After working on over a hundred government proposals, she devised a way, using automation, to create most of a federal government proposal instantly. She directed promotional videos for actors in a casting network. She designed and produced a newspaper covering Latin America. For 17 years Patty has worked on call at an environmental science firm, helping to produce Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers publications. At Hughes Training, she worked on manuals for fighter pilots. For the U.S. Aid for International Development, she reorganized and rewrote a book on threats to aquatic wildlife in Africa. She wrote text and managed marketing for a company selling equipment for semiconductor production and superconducting research, dealing with customers in Japan and Europe. She has done design and layout in Spanish, including a proposal related to the expansion of the Panama Canal. For the Construction Specifications Institute, she designed and produced manuals that set national standards for architects. Patty did market planning, writing, and design for a distributer of Sony, Panasonic, and Houston Instrument engineering and graphics equipment. For a Department of Justice ad campaign to prevent job discrimination, she helped produce a series of ads and brochures. For Freddie Mac she created training manuals for seminars. As part of the military's Base Realignment and Closure, Patty designed, produced, and edited the publications describing what renovations were needed for military base schools. She designed the magazine for Meals on Wheels. She also teaches classes in media production, illustration, and acting.

But the world of television, radio, and newspapers that she originally trained for no longer exists. In 1995, two years after the web browser was invented, she started to study and use this amazing new medium. Dial-up internet limited web designers to text and a few pictures. But broadband . . .

Patty's focus now is on bringing web design to a wholly different level, both creatively and technically. She researches the best way to communicate and sell online, including how to sell creative work directly. Patty also works extensively in the fine arts—drawing and painting—and utilizes this and her video background in finding the real potential in this infant medium: web pages that are art, online videos that move beyond choppy talking heads. Most important, web sites that work. Because every media production is trying to get the viewer to do something—take action or buy something or think about something differently. Patty creates media that works.

Clients for Patty's creative and production work have also included Wang Government Services, Science Applications International Corp., Pacific Architects and Engineers, and Northrup Grumman Corp. Federal agencies also include Department of State, Department of Health and Human Services, National Science Foundation, Department of the Army, Coast Guard, Department of Energy, Federal Aviation Administration, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Agriculture.

The following links lead to detailed information about Patty's experience in each area.