Welcome to my website. My name is Tony Alejandro Espinoza. I am a freelance graphic designer based out of sunny Miami, Florida, specializing in traditional and digital illustration, graphic design, web design and development. I have over 12 years of professional experience in the creative field. I take great pride in having built my knowledge and technical skills from personal interest and ambition as well as working directly with web marketing development firms and the hospitality and tourism industry.
Traditional & Digital Illustration
I have been an illustrator all of my life. Becoming a professional illustrator had always been a childhood dream of mine. I spent most of my free time as a child doodling on notepads and scraps of paper. I became familiar with digital illustration in college when I got my first copy of Adobe Illustrator and quickly took these newfound skills to the battlefield by creating a series of daily online comic strips that, while never making it into the spotlight, did manage to gain a small following of faithful readers. Today I continue to practice these skills in my website and logo design work.
Graphic Design
I studied graphic design at Miami Dade College and the University of Miami between 1997 and 2003 graduating with an Associates degree in Art and a Bachelor degree in Graphic Design. As lead designer at MiamiWebmasters (Oct ‘99 – Jul ‘06) I was in charge of developing the front-end design of various websites custom-designed for our clientel ranging from small to medium-sized businesses. This usually also entailed creating a brand for these start-up businesses. From creating logos to designing print collateral (business cards, brochures, flyers, postcards, etc).
I continue to work on similar projects at my current place of employment, the Biltmore Hotel, creating promotional material in both print and electornic form. One of my ongoing responsibilities during my employment has been the gradual rebranding of the hotel’s vast library of print collateral. This includes brochures, pamphlets, faq sheets, postcards and promotional flyers for the sales, catering, spa and food & beverage departments.
Web Development
My first “real” job started in October 1999 when I was just midway through college. I got a part-time job as a junior web designer for a small starter company known as MiamiWebmasters who needed a graphics person to fill in the void that their web/application programmers left. Being the only designer in the company allowed me the freedom to reinterpret my print design knowledge and use it to create user-friendly and accessible websites. The company’s niche was mostly small-to-medium websites at the time so it allowed me to produce several sites back-to-back and thus gave me the chance to grow and develop my own design/implementation process and style – something that would normally have taken a longer period of time as a casual freelancer.
In the years that followed and as the company grew, I took on more significant roles ranging from lead designer to project manager. In managing several projects at once I further developed my multitasking skills as well as well as the ability to prioritize work in order to meet deadlines and provide the customer with satisfactory service.
This also opened up many opportunities through networking with clients which eventually lead me to my current position as lead webmaster for Seaway Group / Biltmore Hotel where I am in charge of managing the Seaway Group’s chain of hotel websites, email campaign marketing and social media.
I excel at web-standard HTML coding, CSS and FLASH animation/design.