Dawn Amato

Dawn brings a diverse perspective to Slightly Mad. A graduate of LIU Post, Dawn is a painter, sculptor and fine artist. Since her graduation from Post in 1986, Dawn had been the President of Sidewalk Designs - a successful Long Island based design studio. She built a solid company that reflected her creativity, work ethic and commitment to excellence.

The company focused on delivering a combination of advertising, design and internet strategy. In 2007 Dawn partnered with Paul and they launched Slightly Mad.

Like many designers and digital artists of today, Dawn's professional career began with a degree in Fine Art, painting and sculpture, and then showing in NYC galleries and selling her works. Back then there was no 'World Wide Web" and computers (as we know them today) were science fiction. Dawn founded Sidewalk Designs as a visual merchandising and exhibit design company right out of college.

She traveled the New York Metropolitan area designing award winning displays and exhibits for high profile retailers, retail chains, and B to B clients and the company grew quickly to four trucks and 6 teams. In the early 90’s, Dawn expanded her service offering into the brave new world of Computer Aided Design (CAD). By 1991 Sidewalk Designs had grown to a successful design studio with a national client base, developing campaigns and creative for exhibits, large scale Broadway spectaculars and other out of home media as well as websites and print advertising.

Sidewalk Designs has worked on brands such as North Fork Bank where Dawn headed the rebranding effort. She lead the acquisition by North Fork Bank of several institutions such as Home Federal, Jamaica Savings, Reliance Federal and Greenpoint Savings Banks as well as North Fork Bank’s expansion into Metropolitan New York with the acquisition of Commercial Bank of New York. At the same time she concepted and implemented new “ground up” branches throughout the Long Island, New York and New Jersey regions. This re-branding and expansion effort paid off in a big way with the purchase of North Fork Bank by Capitol One.

During this time Dawn headed many other projects for large national brands such as the rebranding transition from Kinko's to Fedex-Kinko's, Vitamin World, Party City, Carvel, Barnes & Noble, Dolphin Mall in Miami, Channelside Mall in Tampa, Robb & Stucky’s, Kenneth Cole Reaction, Starbucks, many different Florida development projects and the rebuilding of outdoor advertising throughout Florida post Hurricane including the historic Hurricane Katrina.

Dawn has expertise in a wide range of disciplines, an accomplished web designer and programmer, an animator fluent in both flash programming as well as motion graphics, an expert typographer, an expert in outdoor advertising and the affects that distance, height and motion have on the viewer experience, plus copywriter, photographer and so much more.

Dawn is passionate about brands and the value that a well-crafted identity creates for a company. A visionary with a unique perspective, Dawn manages our team to deliver against complex challenges to ensure that our clients have the tools that they need to distinguish themselves in their market.