Areas of Expertise

Strategy & Innovation

Cross-Functional Leadership

UX/UI/Visual/Interaction Design

Storytelling

Brand Development

Marketing Innovation

Some of My Favorite Things to Do

Making customers ecstatic.

Building “A-Teams” from the ground up.

Bringing truly exceptional MVPs to market in record time.

Building profitable companies where people love coming to work.

Bringing fresh perspective and truly unique “big ideas” to unblock otherwise bottlenecked situations.

Working cross-functionally to create a genuine human connection, establish a shared vision, drive consensus, and create exponential value for organizations.

Delivering best-of-breed human-centered design solutions to complex business problems.

Producing highly strategic creative work that gets noticed by the right people for the right reasons.

Winning industry awards.

Chris Rimple
Product/Engineering Leader, SkyKick
There’s no better recommendation than rehiring: Sean’s worked for me twice, and I will be hiring him again if I have the opportunity. At One Step Beyond, he had full ownership for all aspects of the visual design for client projects, working closely with Product Mgmt and UX teams to create compelling experiences that delighted our clients (and their customers), then with Engineering to implement those designs in an Agile/Scrum environment. His design knowledge and skills are top-notch, with the ability to work across a wide range of platforms and experiences. He “plays well with others” and was a very valuable member of our team. Hire him quick, before I do.
Brian Lamka
Director of Product Management, Nike
Sean’s the guy you need to turn your product ideas into beautiful and intuitive consumer products. First, he’s deeply knowledgable. He’s a student of both the history of design and current trends and brings this knowledge into all his projects. Second, he’s a strong collaborator and is very effective at leading brainstorming, customer research, and design review meetings. One truism about design is that everyone has an opinion. Sean recognizes this, and is able to elegantly manage conflicting inputs so that all parties are included in the process but the end result doesn’t turn out to be a designed-by-committee disaster. Third, he’s very effective working with all roles within an organization. He can communicate design rationale to executives and achieve sign off as effectively as he can pair with a developer and communicate design specifications while the dev codes them up. Most importantly, in my opinion, he’s a standup person. He’s a positive force in the office, actively encourages morale, and is someone you both like and respect. I’ve worked with Sean twice now, and I wouldn’t hesitate to team up with him again.
Joseph Bettencourt
Strategic Alliances Project Manager, Poly
If superior talent and personal integrity are important qualities in a potential employee for you, then there’s no question that Sean Ross is the perfect creative lead for your project. In a city where finding designers with talent isn’t that difficult, Sean offers something beyond that – character. He is an amazing designer who really listens to the needs of each client and is able to say in design what they cannot sometimes say in words. I really enjoyed working with him in a creative capacity and highly recommend him to anyone. He is innovative, deadline-driven, responsible, and very intelligent. Simply put — He is phenomenal 
Annie Sammis
Sr. Brand Strategist, 25 Beacon Street
Sean was a key member of a great creative team who was the go-to on a ton of creative projects with objectives varying from driving network traffic to increasing trial rates to profile completion, all during a time of huge growth for Yahoo! Personals and the emerging growth of the online dating category. He is prolific, smart, clever, a good listener, consumer-focused, humble, calm, super collaborative and results oriented.
Eric Blumenau
Senior SRE, Sprout Social, Inc.
Sean was a funny (read: humorous) coworker who had good, strong visions on marketing our brand and products. I was in the system administration/back-end developers’ group and Sean could talk our language, making communication easy. I recommend Sean for managing graphic design work across teams.
Erica Firment
Head of Product, Compaas
Sean is one talented guy. He’s one of those designers who always has a pen in his hand, drawing ideas as fast as most people can talk. As a Creative Director, he has great intuition, design skills and inter-personal skills. He’s smart, articulate, clear and efficient in the way he presents his ideas, asks the appropriate questions, and has a very strong design sensitivity. I really enjoyed working with Sean, and our project benefitted immensely from his leadership.
Sara Thacher
Making immersive adventures and playful experiences, Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development
Sean made our project for the Exploratorium possible. His combination of skills: deft audio editor, experienced vinyl mastering, and graphic design meant that he took our raw audio files and turned them into great-sounding and great looking custom 45s. He worked with our existing graphic language and made lovely, hand screen-printed labels and sleeves.
It’s not often you find someone capable of producing both the audio and visual aspects of a very specialized medium (vinyl) with such skill and craft in both.
Rick McKee
Independent Executive Producer
As the former Director of Graphics for TechTV, I am pleased to recommend Sean Ross for any creative position involving design, web, music or technology. For over 5 years, Sean successfully combined his keen creative and management skills, with new ways to communicate using electronic media. Sean reported directly to me as a Web Designer, for over three years, and was truly able to bridge the areas of broadcast and web design. He often contributed creative direction for broadcast projects, before moving the design into the web world. I found Sean to be particularly strong in three key areas: creativity, production management and electronic media.

As one of the founding members of our web design team, Sean understood how to work creatively, from the ground up, with very few resources. He was a key contributor in the design of our original website, ZDTV.com, and it’s initial six TV show sites. Sean’s creativity and management skills were evident, as he was promoted from Designer, to Senior Designer, and finally to Design Director of Web Creative Services.

Sean was an asset to our visual creative departments, not only as designer and Director, but he also contributed to other areas of our cable TV station. Sean would often provide music tracks for the Graphics Department, to use with our animated show opens and promotional videos. He was very instinctive in understanding the mood or style of a video and would create musical tracks that enhanced the visuals. He has a strong musical background, evidenced by his guitar and keyboard skills, as well as the technical knowledge of electronic music and sound mixing.
From my experience working with Sean for 5 years, it is clear that he is more than capable of taking his creativity to the next level of visual design and technical innovation. I feel confident in recommending Sean for any opportunity in your business. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further information.
Sincerely,

Rick Mckee

mckee77@comcast.net
Jacob Harris
NN/g certified UX Designer and Strategist
Y’know those guys in your neighborhood when you were growing up that were able to build and fix anything? That was what it was like working with Sean. He was never at a loss for ideas and always available to answer my questions or provide insight during a challenging project. Sean is polite, resourceful, organized and extremely artistically talented. He is an artist-Buddah with an awareness for timelines. Loved working with this guy.
Bryna Bank
Designer and leader
Sean is a thoughtful and creative designer, with a solid grounding in both product and identity design. He brings immense creativity to the table and is passionate about exploring the edges of design possibilities, while simultaneously providing leadership, constructive criticism, and mentorship to his fellow team members. He’s also a whiz at organizing and driving large high-profile projects, meeting deadlines and making the work fun at the same time. Unfortunately Beyond closed before having the opportunity to work more with Sean, but I hope to work with him, or hire him, again!
Brenda Laurel
Principal, Neogaian Interactive
Sean Ross is simply brilliant. My life has been enriched by the way he sees, as well as by what and how he designs. Sean is a unique individual in that, while uncompromising in his values and passions, he is both collaborative and responsive. Sean Ross was an experienced professional when he entered the Grad Design MFA program. It has been a pleasure to watch him grow in his craft and commitment. He is one of the finest students I have ever worked with, and he has my wholehearted recommendation as a mature, accomplished designer and visionary.
Martin Venezky
Professor, Graduate Program in Design, California College of the Arts
I had the pleasure of teaching Sean while he was a graduate student at CCA and as his primary thesis advisor. Sean’s dedication, work ethic and determination cannot be overpraised. No matter how intense the critique, Sean was always willing to do the difficult thing if it meant that he would learn from it. His skill, confidence and aesthetic sense matured over his two years in our program, developing into a genuine creative force.
Barry Katz
Professor, California College of the Arts
Sean Ross was one of the top students in his MFA class at CCA. Without exception the faculty found him to be thoughtful, focussed, committed to his craft and receptive of criticism. He was an absolute pleasure to work with and I recommend him without reservation.
AJ Kohn
Digital Marketing Executive and Start-Up Advisor
Sean has a great creative eye and developed a consistent and better style guide in a short amount of time. His strong point of view is complemented by an ability to collaborate and a great sense of humor.
Tim Sullivan
VP of Growth, GreenFig
Sean Ross is an exceptionally talented and very disciplined designer with an eye for simple, easy-to-use interfaces and the ability to design towards a unified, consistent, and intelligible site experience while working on a disparate set of site components. At Caring.com, he arrived to a site whose feature set was excellent but highly silo-ed and was able, over the course of many different projects of varying size, to establish a much more consistently patterned UI and visual style, but without the cost, deliberation, and risk involved in a site-wide redesign. Sean is an intelligent and insightful participant in the process of product definition, one who cares about the big picture and the granular details. He is a responsive colleague who knows not just how to make things pretty but also how to get things done. And he’s frequently totally hilarious.
Andy Cohen
Senior Vice President of Sales; Board Member; CEO
Sean is a talented and capable designer, and did some great work for us at Caring.com. I’d definitely recommend him for design projects!
Laurel Lee
Senior Staff Program Manager, Plenty
As a product manager, I need my creative director to be a lot of things: a great collaborator, understanding and interested in the customer, the application capabilities and the engineers; I need this person to be flexible, handle feedback well, listen and work off others’ ideas effectively, handle office dynamics well, and of course be the most creative guy in the room. Sean is all this and more. From mock ups to iterations to final design to working with the engineers on implementation, he does excellent work. He’s also a really wonderful guy. I would work with Sean again in a heartbeat.
Kaari Peterson
Director of User Experience Research, Chegg Inc.
Sean is bright, personable and hard-working. He’s one of the most creative people I’ve managed. I would work with him again in a heart beat.
Paxton Brewer
Ski Patrol, Crystal Mountain Resort
Although we only worked together for 6 months, we have remained both friends and colleagues for close to ten years. We regularly give each other support, feedback and advice on each other’s work. This working/personal relationship has been immensely valuable to me.
I won’t go deeply into Sean’s exceptional skill set, his dedication to his craft, or his admirable work ethic. His resume and portfolio speak to those points better than I ever could. What I will say is that Sean is a passionate, intelligent and talented designer. He’s also a great guy to work with. I have no hesitation in recommending him for any design job.
Todd Anthony
Executive Creative Director, Pinwheel
Sean is one of those rare individuals who can take a step back from an assignment and ask himself, “What would really get people excited about this product?” Then he would draw on his experiences (Sean is always busy immersing himself in the world around him) to come up with the answer. His ideas are always unique and always big. I enjoyed working with Sean and felt that we did good work together. He’s also one of the funniest sumbitches I’ve ever had the pleasure to share a cube wall with.I would warmly recommend him to anyone for anything. Whatever it is, Sean can figure it out. Trust me.
J.T. Lam
Digital/Interactive - Marketing - Creative Services - Project Management
Sean is fantastic to work with!!! His ability to generate original/new ideas is insane (as in phenomenal, effortless, amazing, you get the point)!!!! He communicates well, is calm under pressure, and just fun to work with. If you are looking for a creative mind you’ve found him! (p.s. you would want this guy as your fooseball partner!!!)
Catherine Kelly
Motion & Graphic Designer, Pixar Animation Studios
Sean is the perfect combination: extremely talented designer who has the organization and technical ability to transform vision into reality. In addition, he can lead and mentor a team of designers through all aspects of design production, keeping his cool all the way. His talent is vast – he is an accomplished musician as well as designer – but his personality perhaps overshadows his talent. He is truly a wonderful person to work with, talk to, learn from, and create with.