About Me

My work at NYC Health + Hospitals, The NYC Department of Sanitation, Bellevue Hospital, and the Healing Arts Initiative has focused on public education. My goal as a writer and designer is to make complex concepts easier for different audiences to understand. 

Contact me at dave@zackindesign.com if you are interested in collaborating on a project.  

Education

Master of Public Health — Hunter/CUNY School of Public Health, 2016
Master's thesis: Rebranding NYC's Public Health Care System

Master of Arts — Urban Studies, Queens College, 2010
Capstone: Creating a Library of Patient Education Materials at Bellevue Hospital

Bachelor of Fine Arts — Rhode Island School of Design, 2002
Animated Thesis — Short Film: Tunanooda — won a Student Emmy, and appeared in more than eighty film festivals, including New Directors/New Films at Lincoln Center, the Kodak Showcase at Cannes, and the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Experience

NYC Health + Hospitals
Assistant Director of Design/Communications/Marketing, 2013-2018
Created marketing and educational materials for multilingual patient population and visual communications for staff of 35,000 including:

• System-Wide Rebranding — collaborated with Communications and Marketing team on transformation from HHC to NYC Health + Hospitals, a design based move to unify the city’s public health care facilities
• Patient Education Materials — created wayfinding/signage, posters, brochures, etc. in multiple languages aimed at New Yorkers with limited reading comprehension
• Media Relations — worked with communications team to create press releases and organize press conferences and media events
• Digital Content — oversaw system website redesign in Wordpress, created visuals for marketing/social media campaigns and electronic bulletin boards at facilities
• Staff Communications — created intranet content, posters, digital displays, banners, and signage, internal weekly newsletters, and more

NYC Department of Sanitation — NYC Recycles
Art Director/Associate Public Information Specialist, 2012-2013
Rebranded municipal recycling programs for the City of New York and redesigned hundreds of recycling education/awareness materials:

• All Plastics Recycling — Created posters, stickers, mailers, and web content for 2012 transition to all-plastics recycling
• Public Space Recycling Barrels — designed blue, green, and black lidded public recycling bins currently placed in more than 100,000 NYC locations
• Public Events — promoted department initiatives at fairs, toxic material disposal days, school recycling fairs, and other public events 
• School Based Recycling Education — Created content for 80 page recycling curriculum packet, and collaborated on designs for school-based compost program signage 

NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue
Designer/Coordinating Manager, Public Affairs, 2007-2012
Responsible for patient education materials, staff education, and media relations

• Writing/Design — Created a library of patient education materials including a hospitals-wide inpatient guide, and a system of info-sheets for each area of service
• Presentations — Organized monthly hospital-wide staff meetings and presented information to staff and stakeholders
• Media Relations — Communicated with press about patient conditions and hospitals initiatives, organized press events

Healing Arts Initiative
Teaching Artist, 2004-2007
Taught digital design and fine art classes for members of under-served populations in the NYC area. Some classes included:

• Studio at HAI — Eight hour NEA funded weekly art/digital design class for high-functioning adults with schizophrenia/bipolar disorder
• Hawthorne Cedar Knolls — Art courses/activity therapy for teenagers at a residential treatment program/prison alternative high school
• Fort Greene Houses — Art class for NYCHA transitional housing residents

Skills

Video/Animation — can storyboard/script, shoot and edit videos
Design Software — proficient in all Adobe CC programs and MS Office products
Web Design — experience with Squarespace, Wordpress, and HTML coding
Fine Arts — I make ceramic portrait sculptures, mostly of old men  — see my other site: davezackin.com