icandi Design + Development

icandi Design + Development, a graphic and web design and development agency, was founded in Los Angeles in the mid-90s by Vanessa King, the company’s sole proprietor. Educated in Canada, she was hired in 1989 by the swimwear company Ziganne of California as a traditional cut-and-paste graphic designer. In 1990, she was tasked with designing and digitally developing an in-house magazine for them. She began by researching, buying, and teaching herself to use the digital tools—hardware and software—necessary to create and publish a 5-color, glossy fashion magazine, complete with gorgeous dummy ads from major swimwear brands. This began her love affair—with everything Mac specifically, and technology in general. For the next few years, she continued her work as a contract designer, then started icandi Design + Development. Since then she has worked for a number of Fortune 500 companies and internationally recognized non-profits. Her clients have ranged from auto manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda, to an Oscar-winning costume designer, various film studios, the SEIU, and the LA Gay and Lesbian Center, to name just a few. She has also worked quite extensively with clients in the healthcare and long-term care fields and health insurance companies such as Cigna, Blue Cross and HealthNet/HSI and financial institutions like Union Bank of California. In addition to decades of experience as a graphic print designer, she brings almost as many years of web design/development and new media experience to icandi. She is fluent in HTML, CSS, Liquid and PHP, and works with XML, ASP.net and MySQL databases. She also works with Shopify for e-commerce development and WordPress for content management and from-scratch theme/plugin development. Though the bulk of her experience was in Los Angeles, she returned home to Canada in late 2009 to be closer to family. icandi Design + Development offers design and development services to clients in the US, Canada and internationally.