Dan Levine photo copyright Rob Brizzell

I’ve worked in news media, publishing, entertainment, edTech, and construction.

Since 2018, I’ve worked in the sign industry in New York City. I’ve managed wayfinding, advertising, civil, and private projects.

Through 2017, I was manager of content design & production at Isabella Products in Concord, MA. I established new branding, designed a consumer-facing children’s eBook app, and created the wireframe for a two-million-dollar NSF-funded collaborative writing platform. The latter was based on the idea that with a digital platform and affordable devices, we could foster an environment where children write collaboratively to improve writing skills, study skills, reading, and expression. Many solutions exist to teach & measure children’s reading—far fewer exist to teach writing—virtually none in the digital space. Exciting concept, isn’t it?

I arrived at Isabella Products when they acquired NY-based edTech publisher StarWalk Kids Media, where I had been Head of Production/Art Director since 2012. At StarWalk we produced a 600-title eBook library. The collection included an extensive multilingual section at Amazon’s request, for their Kindle platform. It was a wonderful opportunity to work with world-class children’s authors & illustrators whose titles I was re-packaging for their digital debut. This was important work with the mission to fill the gap between great books and young digital consumers in a quest to improve literacy. In addition to the I.P. of the catalog, I designed the proprietary StarWalk Kids Reader U/I.

Along with managing vendors and freelancers, I also designed original titles, including MALALA: Warrior with Words by Karen Leggett Abouraya and L.C. Wheatley. This title has sold 20,000 copies and won both the Eureka and QED awards.

Before joining StarWalk, I produced campaigns for GE Life Science at East House Creative in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., We lived in Astoria at the time, which meant that I could commute by road bike*. It was an hour-long ride that included three rivers, three bridges, and two states; w/no gas, no tolls and no charge – take that, Elon.

In the twelve years leading up to that, I was Art Director at Razor & Tie/Kidz Bop in NYC. I helped launch the Kidz Bop brand and designed many of R&T’s as-seen-on-TV products.

In the late ‘90s, prior to Kidz Bop, I was an assistant to Art Director Kim Muller-Thym at the Jewish Week in their offices at Times Square. I was entrusted with designing the front color sections as well as general production and special editions. Kim is now a full-time oil painter, showing in galleries in the northeast.

I arrived at the Jewish Week after an unforgettable internship (as they should be) at Art & Ink Enterprises in Hoboken. This was a lifestyle magazine company, concerned with body arts (Tattooing was illegal in NYC at the time) and outlaw motorcycle culture. Its publisher, the late Casey Exton (a.k.a. Harvey Shaprio, pronounced shah-pyro), had been an executive in Larry Flynt’s empire. We smoked cigarettes in the office and used paste-up boards. I’m grateful for the tutelage of editor Jean-Chris Miller and art director Marco Turelli.

*1993 yellow Olmo San Remo w/Shimano 105