Peter Comitini
Key strengths
Creative Direction and Design
Branding & Identity Standards
Real Estate Sales & Marketing
Customer Experience
Visual Storytelling
- A Creative Director with a proven record of gaining audience and increasing sales on a global scale, with high-levels of aesthetic delivery.
- An articulate design leader, educator, and mentor who truly believes that design driven innovation in a company culture creates more satisfying products, persuasive messaging, and long-term value to its brand and the bottom line.
- Skilled in gaining consensus on strategy and visual solutions with a track record of delivering design excellence in fast-paced environments with real deadlines.
- Has managed multi-disciplinary teams in strategy, technology, and visual design.
- An advocate for the user experience using client-facing research, defining strategy and, and expressing it as visual design and interaction systems..
- An team leader and licensed Broker in NYC luxury real estate marketing and sales.
Experience
Associate Real Estate Broker
The Corcoran Group, New York, NY, February 2002—Present
Operating a creative real estate practice where “Real Estate Agency meets Advertising Agency”. The Comitini Team brand uses the power of design expressed in social media, video, print and events to attract customers, convert them into leads, and persuade them to work with us. Closing deals for our client’s luxury homes, townhouses, and real estate investments. Served as a Board member of Corcoran’s Tech Advisory Council.
Adjunct Professor of Design
School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, January 1995—June 2002
Taught Principles of Typography to Computer Arts students and Digital Design to Graphic Design students at my alma mater SVA. Focusing on strategic problem solving, deign strategy, systems, and typography in print, online, and in motion. Weekly assignments and critiques of student work were used as the driving mechanism for learning. An understanding of design history, mentorship, and education have always been core disciplines.
Senior Customer Experience Architect
Scient Inc., New York, NY, January 2000—December 2000
Professional services firm Scient was one of the first to sell innovation by bring together the practice areas of Brand Strategy, Business Strategy, and Technology to inform and enable client’s e-commerce systems. As a Senior Customer Experience Architect I led a team of visual designers, researchers, information architects, content strategists, and front end technologists responsible for the prototyping and building of the user experience. My team engaged in defining business strategy, advocating user requirements, then giving them tangible form on the successful spin-off of Avaya Communication from Lucent Technologies.
Principal
Peter Comitini Design , New York, NY December 1995—December 1999
My design office provided web design, marketing, advertising, graphic design, and illustration services. Clients included Nickelodeon, Discovery Channel, NY1 News, boutique jeweler Gallery Eclectic, REACH School (pro bono) and Global Strategy Group. Notably, the studio’s first website development for kitchen tool manufacturer OXO International, was included in the exhibition US Design 1975—2000 which toured museums internationally
Cover Art Director
Newsweek Inc., New York, NY, January 1990—December 1995
A visual journalist art directing the weekly covers of five global editions at Newsweek. Responsible for a 15% increase in newsstand sales, and the highest selling single issue to date in Newsweek’s history. Worked with Managing Editors and writers to create cover concepts in a fast-paced, multi-tracking, news-driven environment. Managed and directed a department of eight designers and researchers. Recruiting of staff and creative collaboration with top photographers, illustrators, prop stylists, and typographers. Oversaw a $10M art budget for creating compelling editorial content.
Design Director, Creative Services
National Broadcasting Company (NBC), New York, NY | July 1986—Dec. 1989
Created advertising and marketing to promote the network’s News, Sports, and Entertainment divisions’ properties. Contributed to the design of Brand standards and marketing for NBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games.
Graphic Designer
Home Box Office (HBO) | August 1982—June 1986
Developed advertising and marketing supporting HBO’s original programming and B2B industry relationships.
Education
School of Visual Arts
New York, NY, BFA, Graphic Design and Advertising | 1978—1982
Portfolio work focused on typography, branding, and graphic design. Organized the school’s first public gallery exhibition of Graphic Design in 1982. Later returning in 1995 as an educator.
New York University
School of Professional Studies | 2002
Real estate licensure requirements, coursework in real estate finance
Creative problem solving with a collaborative approach that is focused on delivering highly valued content and experiences for users, readers, customers, and viewers.
Professional recognition
Exhibitions
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY
“Who’s Values?” Newsweek cover about family values included in the ‘Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture’ exhibition of graphic design and in the permanent collection at MoMA. (1996). Cover art by Barbara Kruger
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
The OXO International website was featured in the exhibition ‘US Design, 1975-2000’ that toured internationally, starting with MAD in New York. (2002)
Awards
- The Art Directors Club
- American Institute of Graphic Arts
- American Society of Magazine Editors—Ellie Award (Newsweek)
- Communication Arts
- PRINT Magazine
- Broadcast Designers Association—Gold & Silver Awards
- American Corporate Identity
- American Journalism Review
Books and journals
- HOW Magazine, Making the Brand, August 2002
- WebWorks: Navigation, edited by Ken Coupland, Rockport Publishing
- Print’s Best Logos and Symbols 5, by Andrew Day, RC Publications
- American Typeplay, by Steven Heller and Gail Anderson, PBC International
- HOW Magazine, Cover Story, February 1992
- Problems/Solutions: Visual Thinking for Graphic Communication by Richard Wilde, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. Professional speaking
- HOW Design, Conference speaker, 2005
- AIGA, Produced ‘New Media Night’, 1993
Real Estate
- Press mentions may be seen on Corcoran.com
- Corcoran Group Multi-Million Dollar Club (2004-present)
- REBNY Speaker Panel, Staging Design, Residential Brokerage Committee 2017
- Member Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
Affiliations
- Past Vice President/Board Member of American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA/NY, 1993-1995)
- Licensed New York State Associate Real Estate Broker (2002-present)
- Member REBNY (2002-present)
- Member Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
Skills and software
Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe, Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Rremiere, Adobe XD, Keynote, PowerPoint, MS Word, MS Office, WordPress, Elementor, draw.io, IDX, creative writing, typography, news, magazines, brand, art direction, graphic design, UX, photography, illustration, animation, video editing, web design and development
Biography
Whether the product is a media company, website, magazine, or a service, the high-level processes are the same. Intuition, clear articulation of ideas, collaboration, persuasion, and assuring quality delivery are my core strengths.
Trained as a graphic designer at the School of Visual of Arts, later returning there as an Adjunct Professor. Early career began as a Design Director at HBO and NBC, creating marketing for Entertainment, Sports, and News. The ability to craft images and words in compelling ways caught the attention of Newsweek where Peter became the Cover Art Director, clocking a 15% increase in newsstand sales. A fast-paced environment with non-negotiable weekly deadlines to ship product, and where everything can change at a moment’s notice because of breaking news. Led the Cover Department which was focused solely on creating instantly recognizable concepts for the stories competing for the top spot that week. Rapid prototyping, multiple iterations, and the ability to pivot quickly as conditions required, are key strengths learned during this period. Later, branching out on his own, Peter Comitini Design consulted on a wide variety of projects for media companies like Nickelodeon, Discovery Communications and NY1 News. later joining the professional services firm Scient as a Senior Customer Experience Architect, Leading a multi-disciplined team with roles in Content Strategy, Visual Design, Research, Front End Technology, and Information Architecture through research and ideation; alongside business strategy, and technology teams. Identifying a client’s pain points and creating new solutions. The job was to tell the brand’s story through the User Experience.
A true believer in the power of design driven business cultures to improve people’s lives, and in the power of real estate to build wealth and financial stability— fusing the two as a top producing Associate Broker at the Corcoran Group operating a creative real estate practice where “Real Estate Agency meets Advertising Agency”. Using the power of design and media to attract customers and close deals for clients representing luxury homes, townhouses, and real estate investment assets.
Send Peter an email ▸. | 917.439.3856 | Brooklyn, NY He, Him, His
