The Composing Room/Media-Works/AdSell Companies
Director of Technology
(October '96 - Present)

2008 represents my 17th year at The Composing Room. My days are spent bouncing between the digital and analog worlds of both print and web. Some days are spent doing color management of large format ink jet devices and the next I'm developing web applications with GoLive and Lasso. As VP of Technology, it is my job to stay on top of it all, which includes decision and procurement of all new technologies and processes. As TCR webmaster, I maintain our T1 based internet services including WWW, FTP and Email servers. As TCR systems admininstrator, I keep our 100+ node LAN flowing and make sure our main Windows 2000 fileservers remain up and running. My duties also include all updates/upgrades and general Mac/PC maintenance as well as weekly tape backup/archiving of all completed jobs and servers.

I've helped to establish TCR's internet presence with a fully functional site to help educate our clients and sell our products and services. I am responsible for all content on composingroom.com and several hosted sites. Initial primary focus was developing an online ordering system tied to a Filemaker database facilitating our clients' needs of uploading files via FTP and WWW directly.

I've been responsible for virtually all marketing & promotional the materials, including the redesign of The Composing Room logo and corporate identity. I have also been primary source behind developing the Media-Works division as a source for Internet, New-Media, and 3D design.

The Composing Room Inc.
Technical Director
(October '95 - October '96)

Responsible for the procurement of all new technologies and processes. This position was very much hands on, so I was still very much in the production flow. I was called upon to do mostly operation-intensive jobs. Complex Photoshop compositing, difficult trapping requirements, and critical color corrections. Other responsibilities included hardware & software troubleshooting for all equipment.

The Composing Room Inc.
Image Scanning & Compositing
(December '92 - October '95)

Received training at Linotype-Hell in New York to operate the Chromagraph S2000 scanner. Main job focus was hi-rez photo scanning involving color correction, photo retouching, photo modification, special effects, and compositing. Applied experience to then use the Linotype-Hell Topaz Scanner (first beta site in North America).

The Composing Room Inc.
Macintosh Graphic Artist
(July '91 - December '92)

Worked in MacLab setting graphics for a wide and diverse client base. Basic jobs included logos, flyers, brochures, and other camera ready artwork. I was also responsible for prepress work including: troubleshooting client files, trapping, and printing color separations.

See my Porfolio Section for most current examples of work

McDonnell Douglas Corporation
Macintosh Technical Illustrator
(January '88 - July '91)

Produced a variety of artwork for presentations, brochures, posters, technical booklets, and logo design. Responsible for artwork organization of multi-million dollar proposals for the U.S. and foreign governments, involving hundreds of pages of page makeup and graphics. Worked on-site at Research Laboratories, producing technical research information including word charts, illustrations and typesetting of complex mathematical equations.

Please note I survived the massive layoffs of 1991. My department was reduced 40%!
It was approximately three months after surviving the layoffs that I made the jump to The Composing Room.

Crown Cap Company
Production Artist
(June '87 - September '87)

My first real industry job. I found out the hard way what "seasonal" meant. Responsibilities included production and layout of type and art for screen printing on baseball caps, T-shirts and other wearables. Typesetting, line work and color separations were done both traditionally as well as utilizing a Macintosh. Other work included logo reproduction and the design of flyers and brochures.

Seminars & Consulting

Representing The Composing Room I’ve given several seminars at the Apple Market Center, which involved multimedia presentations and ?How To? demonstrations,covering may graphic design applications. Was a speaker at Concepts Expo in Orlando, Florida. Presented on the fundamentals of digital scanning. Most recently I 've done presentations on PDF for the Art Directors Club and font management for the Professional Prepress Alliance.

I am currently on board of directors for the Professional Prepress Alliance. A regionally exclusive national organization whose charter is to enhance the business, technology, and procedures of its members.

Representing myself, TCR or other companies, I’ve done several “How To” demonstrations on Adobe Acrobat and form•Z Renderzone.

Representing myself, I worked with Apple Computer to demonstrate the potential of Quicktime-VR by presenting to The Association of Architects a VR scene I modeled in form•Z which was then imported into StudioPro and rendered to a navigable panoramic VR scene.

Freelance
As Mark Schneider Productions I work from my home pursuing mostly things that interest me beyond the scope of my work at The Composing Room. Main areas of pursuit being 3D modeling and various other web/print design work. See my portfolio for a menu of my past and present clients.


As validation of my passion for 3D, I was 1 of 70 beta testers worldwide for auto•des•sys’ form•Z Renderzone in 1998 when they released the rendering engine for their application.

Other Business Pursuits


In May of 2002 I helped to cofound StraightPipez - Biker Clothing Company which sold various apparel such as T-Shirts, hats, stickers and even soap. Our target audience was the Harley Davidson "chopper" enthusiast. This was really been a great experience building a brand from ground-zero in a well established industry. We had nearly 50 different products for sale which I set up with an eCommerce shopping cart solution.

Software and Hardware Experience