Jazz Semiconductor - 04

All Artwork/Graphic Design is by Grady Lyda

To see my animated version of this invitation, go here: Jazz - 01

Shortly after starting my job, I became responsible for creating the monthly Jazz newsletter. Here is an example of how it looked before I updated the graphics. There are some interesting articles in this issue: Page 1 shows my design for something we called the Jazz Maestro Award, Page 2 is a collection of pics from the 3rd Anniversary Beach Party (my boss, Jessica, is the center lady in the last picture on this page), and Page 3 honors a guy celebrating FIFTY years of working there! See this 4-page PDF by clicking here: All That's Jazz - June 2005

 Jessica, my supervisor

 I often designed postcards & email art to publicize regular dinners with VIP customers that occurred at the (aptly named) Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney. Here are two ideas for a June 13, 2005 event. I don't remember which design was chosen by the executives.

I always built the PowerPoint Presentations for these get-togethers, and below you can see the cover of a typical handout book that showed all the slides from the lecture.

 

 

 Below is a map I made to help visitors find their destination.

You are cordially invited to attend the

Jazz Semiconductor welcomes our customers to a very special appreciation dinner, held in conjunction with the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) Conference & Exposition. Thursday, March 29, 2007 -- Starting at 4:00 pm at the Jazz Kitchen® Downtown Disney® District, Anaheim, California. | 4:00 Registration | 4:30 Jazz Technology Update | 5:00 Happy Hour! | 6:00 Dinner

One of the most popular in-house documents I created was this guide to Jazz Text Standards and Technical Terms. Too see this informative 20-page PDF, get it here: Jazz Guidelines

For a couple of years, the owners planned to launch Jazz as a Public Company to be listed on NASDAQ. This was a big deal requiring serious preparation and perfect timing. Above is the cover art I made for the official Company Prospectus for the upcoming IPO (Initial Public Offering). We had many thousands of these covers printed, and they were sitting on a big palette next to my cubicle when we learned that the IPO had been cancelled because of an interesting development from some former Apple executives who suddenly took over the company.

I spent many hours working on bold logo concepts for the Jazz Technologies rebranding, but ultimately they went with the safest approach. Above is the original biz card (red) & the new one (blue) that I prepared after discussions with Gil Amelio, previous CEO of Apple.

Dr. Gil Amelio 

In the late 1970s, Amelio had served as president in a previous incarnation of Jazz when it was called Rockwell Semiconductor Systems. Now he was back with his Acquicor Technology investment partners from Apple, Ellen and Steve.  See Wikipedia Jazz Article

Ellen Hancock 

Steve Wozniak

Steve Wozniak & Gilbert Amelio had written books which I read while I still worked there. Did you know that Wozniak was a private pilot and he almost died in a plane crash during a bad take-off in 1981? 

Due to head injuries, Woz suffered from anterograde amnesia -- the inability to create fresh memories. With the help of his wife, Candice Clark, he slowly regained the capacity to establish new memories & managed to reconstruct his entire life.  See Wikipedia Woz Article

Here's my All That's Jazz February '07 Newsletter that covered this interesting story. To see the full 4-page PDF of this historic issue, click here: Jazz Feb 2007 

We had a big celebration marking a wonderful new "Chapter" for Jazz. As it turned out, the company came very close to a wonderful "Chapter 13."

Following this merger/take-over, downsizing became necessary and many employees were "let go." Including me. But even after I was laid-off, they kept me there for an extra week so I could arrange the Going Away Party and PPT Presentation for Jazz President & CEO, Shu Li, who had also been fired... Surprise! 

For more like this, go to  Jazz Semiconductor - 01  &  - 02  &  - 03