People
Lauren Ciesa
Creative and Account Director, President & COO
Lauren Ciesa
Creative and Account Director, President & COO
As head of the studio collective, Lauren provides leadership to the creative team. He’ll quietly remind you that the word on the front door that matters most is Design, as he’s passionate to the core about the creative process, and as a result, the talented team that comprises CiesaDesign collaborates to produce creative, innovative, strategic, and award-winning solutions that consistently meet and exceed the needs of their clients. Lauren’s business ethic is imbedded in culture of CiesaDesign, defined by honesty, integrity, hard work, and community engagement. After 30+ years delivering outstanding design communications to national and Mid-Michigan businesses and organizations, Lauren stands by the work.
Kendra Church
Creative, Project Services & Client Relations
Kendra Church
Creative, Project Services & Client Relations
Kendra has a rare kind of design talent we don’t often see in this field. She combines a solid, process-oriented work ethic with her deep intuition for knowing what creative choices will be best for our clients. She builds strong working relationships, she listens, conceptualizes, and delivers beautiful, creative solutions in both web and print formats. Kendra holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design from Central Michigan University. A resident of Williamston, Kendra is a member of the Mid-Michigan Creative Alliance, board member for the East Lansing Art Festival, and an active participant in Old Town festivals and events.
John Donohoe
IT Project Services, Client Relations & Business Development
John Donohoe
IT Project Services, Client Relations & Business Development
John’s passion is to make our clients happy. He’s got an entrepreneurial spirit that drives him to put his feet in the client’s shoes, then go above and beyond to make them completely satisfied. He communicates CiesaDesign’s capabilities and how we can solve branding and design problems. He’s the “advocator” who collaborates with the entire team on behalf of our clients, overseeing progression of the project through completion. With a background covering design, photography, and web development, John knows interactive media, printing, and publications inside out. John holds a BFA in graphic design from MSU, and has worked on design and communication projects in a wide range of industries including automotive, retail software, healthcare, utilities, higher education, manufacturing, microbreweries, packaging, and non-profits.
Nathan Houghton
Creative and Web Development Services
Nathan Houghton
Creative and Web Development Services
Nathan is a print and web designer/programmer and brings more than 20 years of experience to CiesaDesign. He applies a critical eye and his signature design style to elegantly solve complex problems on time and within budget. Nathan’s got chops — with mega skills in HTML, XHTML, CSS, Flash, PHP/MySQL, Drupal, as well as creative applications like Photoshop, which makes him our go-to guy for technical support of any kind. He develops comprehensive, fully responsive websites while preparing new, or expanding established, visual brands. He has a strong track record on projects in state and city government, tourism, healthcare, travel, festivals, music/recording, insurance, agriculture, food, entertainment, and state-level organizations.
Dan Jaquint
Creative and Web Development Services
Dan Jaquint
Creative and Web Development Services
Dan combines a background in graphic design with coding expertise, foundational thinking, and knowledge of standards to produce user-friendly, technically sound web solutions for clients. He applies his technical knowledge to back-end administration and configuration, as well as audio and video engineering. Dan’s the troubleshooter, with expertise in WordPress and 15-plus years of experience in print and web design in a huge range of industries — including higher education, music, business, and hospitality. Dan’s active in the local music scene — performing for various charities, designing CD and vinyl layouts, and recording/mixing his own and other musicians’ projects.
Kevin Liuzzo
Creative Services, User Interface/User Experience Design & Project Services
Kevin Liuzzo
Creative Services, User Interface/User Experience Design & Project Services
Kevin is our design technology Jack-of-all-trades. He’ll plan the design, user interface, user experience, and logic of the websites and applications we build. Kevin guides our creative team from initial client discussions through the creation of design solutions. An analytical and conceptual thinker, he offers progressive vision with characteristic humor and enthusiasm for design, technology, and culture. As web design lead, he creates the project concept and blueprint for the developers. Kevin’s industry experience includes projects in healthcare, travel/tourism, business outreach and development, education, transportation/automotive, technology, politics, child welfare, and entertainment.
Thomas Ro
Web Developer, Client Relations & Project Services
Thomas Ro
Web Developer, Client Relations & Project Services
Thomas is a lead web developer, with over ten years experience in back- and front-end development, focusing on the LAMP stack, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. He develops the most functional technical solutions for the design direction and engineers ideas into custom, seamless web presentations. Aside from web development, his experience includes database and server administration, and programming for the automotive, healthcare, state government, journalism, advocacy, nonprofit, arts, education, retail economic development, tourism, hospitality and transportation industries.
Jackie Warner
Creative & Project Services
Jackie Warner
Creative & Project Services
Jackie is the kind of project manager you can only dream about. Smart, funny, uber-experienced, and completely obsessed with getting it right. If there’s an error to be found, she’ll catch it (thank heavens)! If there’s a deadline to meet, she’ll beat it! She collaborates on many projects at CiesaDesign, but is most notable for producing the monthly Michigan Bar Journal. Jackie has been working in the graphic arts business for over three decades and has established a stellar reputation as a production artist and project manager as a result of, well, crushing it for 30 years! Earned. Period. But, she’ll be the first to tell you that her education continues at CiesaDesign, as she’s constantly learning and influenced by the talented young designers she now has the privilege to work with. And, happily, occasionally teaching them a thing or two!