Jaime Levy

Jaime Levy
Born March 8, 1966
Hollywood, California
Nationality American
Alma mater New York University
San Francisco State University
Known for Information technology and software design pioneer and consultant.
Website
JLR Interactive.com

Jaime Levy is an interface designer and user experience strategist who first became known for her groundbreaking new media projects in the 1990s. Most notable projects include her creation of the floppy disk distributed with Billy Idol’s album Cyberpunk, WORD an online magazine, and an online cartoon series, CyberSlacker.[1]

Background

Jaime was born March 8, 1966 in Hollywood, California and raised in the San Fernando Valley. In 1988, she graduated with a B.A. from San Francisco State University. In 1990, she earned her Master’s degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program where she later spent seven years as a part-time professor.[2]

Career

Her career began in 1990 with the creation of the electronic magazines Cyber Rag[3] and Electronic Hollywood.[4] They were programmed in HyperCard and Macromedia Director and distributed on 800k floppy disks. She leveraged her publicity from numerous print publications[3][4] and tv[5] to increase the sales of these disks in book stores and mail-order.

In 1993, she worked with EMI Records where she designed, animated, and programmed the first commercially released interactive press kit (IPK) for Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk CD digipack.[6] The project featured sequenced samples, digitized video, hypertext, and interactive animation all integrated together as a seamless experience.[7][8] She followed that up with the animated electronic book, Ambulance,[9] that was written by Monica Moran and included music by Mike Watt from the band Minutemen and art by Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets.

In 1994 while employed by IBM as an interface design, she began hosting "CyberSlacker" salons for programmers and animators at her East Village loft.[10] By 1995, she took a creative director position at Icon CMT, where she could focus on the creation of the online magazine WORD.[11][12] It received national recognition for its design and cutting-edge non-linear storytelling.[2][13] She was recognized as Newsweek’s top 50 people to watch in cyberspace[14] and on Good Morning America as one of "The Most Powerful Twentysomethings in America."[15][16][17]

As the dot-com era took off, she went on her own as a consultant. In 1996, she designed a graphical multi-user environment called Malice Palace[18] using The Palace software. Set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, users could engage in real-time chat and interact with robots depicted as homeless people.[19] Prints from Malice Palace were exhibited in a group show titled "Channel 3" at Team Gallery in New York alongside Tracey Emin, Erik Brunetti and Pedro Ortuno.

In 1997, her Silicon Alley-based start-up called Electronic Hollywood received an angel investment.[18] For the next 5-years her company focused on web design, interactive advertising, and original content development. The most prestigious production was the CyberSlacker,[20] Flash cartoon series, which won the Flash Animation Award.[1] She appeared in Doug Block’s 1999 documentary film Home Page and her story was chronicled in the book Gig.[21][22][23]

Not long after the dot-com bubble burst, she shuttered Electronic Hollywood and returned to Los Angeles. From 2002 to the present she has resurfaced as a college professor, author, and user experience design strategist. In 2010, she founded her second company JLR Interactive.[24]

Bibliography

Jaime has published the following works:

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Can You Be a Millionaire?. (2000, December). Dateline NBC [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: NBC Universal Television.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Huntington, A. (1995, September). These Women Do Not Fear The 21st Century. Harper’s Bazaar.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Froman, L. (1992, October). Jaime Levy’s Pioneering Electronic Magazines. Mondo 2000, p. 112.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Ehrman, M. (1993, March). Behind The Zines. Los Angeles Times, p. E1, E6.
  5. ↑ Feature on Electronic Magazine Publisher, Jaime Levy. (1993, January). KCET: Life and Times. [Television broadcast]. LA, CA: PBS Los Angeles.
  6. ↑ MTV News: Billy Idol Cyberpunk Disk. (1993, May). MTV News [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: MTV.
  7. ↑ Appelo, T. A Star Is Virtually Reborn. (1993, July). Entertainment Weekly, p. 24.
  8. ↑ Saunders, M. (1993, May). Billy Idol Turns Cyberpunk on New CD. Boston Globe, p. 31, 34.
  9. ↑ Coover, R. (1993, August). And Now, Boot Up the Reviews. New York Times Book Review, 7, p. 8.
  10. ↑ IBM’s CyberSlacker. (1994, June). New York Magazine, p. 49.
  11. ↑ Silberman, S. (1998, March 11). Word Down: The End of an Era. Wired.
  12. ↑ Cavanaugh, K. (1995, June 15). Post Focus on a Revolution: The Techies. New York Post.
  13. ↑ Goodfellow, K. So What’s A Web Browser, Anyway? (1995, August 14). The New York Times.
  14. ↑ 50 for the Future. (1995, February 27). Newsweek, p. 42, 44.
  15. ↑ Charles Grodin Interviews Jaime Levy, David Lauren “Slackers”. (1996, January). ABC: Good Morning America. [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: ABC.
  16. ↑ The Most Powerful Twentysomethings in America. (1996, January). Swing.
  17. ↑ Powerful Twentysomethings. (1996, April). NBC: Inside Edition. [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: NBC Universal Television.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Bunn, A. (1997, November 11) . Upstart Start Ups. Village Voice, p. 1.
  19. ↑ Soledad O’Brien Interviews Jaime Levy About “Malice Palace”. (1996, September). MSNBC: The Site. [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: MSNBC Network.
  20. ↑ Dannacher, Lee. (1999, August). The Big Apple’s Silicon Alley. Animation World Magazine, 4.5.
  21. ↑ Bowe, J., Bowe, M., & Streeter, S. (Eds.). (2000). Web Content Producer. In Gig. (p. 297-301). New York: Crown Publishers.
  22. ↑ Grigoriadis, V. (2000, April). Cover Story: Generation 1.0 – Oldest Living Silicon Alley Veterans Tell All. New York Magazine, p. 28-35.
  23. ↑ Bowe, J. (2000, May). Day Job: Web Content Producer. The New Yorker, p. 160.
  24. ↑ Stern, C. (2012, September 10) . Jaime Levy Discusses UX at USC. TheDishDaily
  25. ↑ Six Weeks at the Smut Factory: Inside an Adult DVD Authorizing House. (2003, October). Medialine Magazine, p. 40-41.
  26. ↑ The Small World of Games on DVD: Video. (2004, February). Medialine Magazine, p. 34-35.
  27. ↑ Studio Pro vs. Scenarist: Is DVD Authorizing Destined for the Desktop? (2004, May). Medialine Magazine, p. 34-36.
  28. ↑ Imagining the YouTube Model for Interactive Television. (2007). In Lugmayr, A., & Golebiowski (Eds.) Interactive TV: A Shared Experience TICSP Adjunct Proceedings of EuroITV 2007. (p. 270-274). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Tampere International Center for Signal Processing.

External links

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