Year: 2007

Extracurricular Activities

India13 Comments

Dress Code

Yesterday when I asked, “What does an ‘art director’ do?” Erin replied, “I dunno, exactly, but I do know they have a club!” To which I replied, in turn, “Those directors, and their clubs!”

Then, after work, I went out to have some beers with my club.

Which brings on this public service announcement: People, if you don’t live near a professional club, or if you don’t feel like the professional clubs in your area are the sort you’d like to join, start your own damn club. It doesn’t have to be clearly defined. It doesn’t have to be defined at all. It doesn’t have to even meet—maybe your blog friends constitute a club, as I like to think that mine do. But do try to have some kind of professional group you can call your own, however informal. It tastes good, and it’s good for you! Continue reading “Extracurricular Activities” →

Excuse me—which way is the art at?

India10 Comments

And speaking of directing art, tell me your trade secrets!

  • Where do you go to find free or nonspendy photographs?
  • How do you get ideas for photographs to illustrate stories that are, let’s say, totally and completely nonvisual? Are there tricks you use when you’re wholly uninspired?
  • How do you find that photo that you know exists but that’s just refusing to come up, no matter what keywords you use to search for it?
  • Where do you go to find illustrators?
  • How much guidance do you give to illustrators—to what extent do you just let them do their arty thing?
  • Do you generally deal with agencies or go directly to the artists?

We’ve mostly been using Creative Commons–licensed Flickr images, Associated Press photos, Photofest, Mary Evans Picture Library (which doesn’t seem to work with Firefox on the Mac—grrr), cheap stock places like iStockPhoto, behemoths such as Corbis and Getty, and specialty archives such as USHMM. I’ve recently started trawling through the listings at PhotoServe, but I haven’t yet used anything from any of the agencies I found there. I’d also somehow never heard of the mega-agency Jupiter until last week.

We haven’t hired any illustrators yet, but we’d love to. Some illustration agencies I’ve been looking at are CIA and Riley. Also, the DrawMo! del.icio.us dump. Any advice or recommendations are welcome (the only illustrations I’ve ever commissioned in the past are maps for fantasy books; I’m not sure that’s the look we want).

Heeeeelp meeeeeee!

What does an “art director” do?

India10 Comments

Beats me. I’ve never worked with one in my life, but now this is my job title, so I’m trying to figure it out. What do you think it means?

My job so far seems to break down as follows:

  • 60 percent art wrangling, for print and Web. This includes photo research, chasing down permissions, cleaning up and sizing art, making more-or-less templated graphic doo-dads, and assembling stuff into online galleries.
  • 30 percent layout, which is to say, picking up templates (or tracing PDFs, when files aren’t handy) made by someone else, for stuff like invitations, postcards, business cards, and a sixteen-page semiannual magazine. There’s a single house font family and a very narrow house color palette, so very little “design” enters the equation. Print production and distribution management for same.
  • 10 percent Web, um, review. We’re in the final weeks of a relaunch, so we’re looking at a lot of new page designs. I’m neither designing nor managing; just mostly trying to help with quality control.

I’ve done this kind of work in the past, mixed in different proportions, under titles like “program associate” or “program director” or “webmaster” or “managing editor.” It’s not like my title matters to me—I’m going to do the work that needs to be done, regardless—but I do suspect that other people have expectations of what an AD does or knows how to do, and I have no idea how my skills and experience relate to those expectations.

Have you ever been or worked with an art director? What does the title mean to you?

Get What You're Worth

India15 Comments

“Senior page monkey” Schizohedron has written an excellent post called Tips for Fair Workplace Compensation. It’s not specific to the design industry at all, but I suspect this is something a lot of (so-called) creative workers are especially bad at, as we like to think that our jobs are more fun than other people’s. Dude, your job may be what you like to do, but it’s still a job. Get paid for it.

There are so many good points in there that it’s hard for me to quote anything without just copying and pasting the whole thing, but I’ll limit myself to the rousing finale:

They employ you. They do not own you. They don’t govern the course of your career. Only you can decide when your work and your interests no longer follow the same track. Identifying and accepting this sort of discrepancy is not a mark of failure. I define a failure as someone who neglects to collect every cent of compensation and every hour of time off he or she has earned, who instead works weekends and Federal holidays because they think this will impress their bosses. Don’t work for your boss. Work for your professional development, for the satisfaction of meeting your goals, and for the means to enjoy a comfortable, well-rounded life. Work for yourself.

I am a failure. Continue reading “Get What You're Worth” →

Integrate Firefox with your text editor

India14 Comments

I use Firefox as my main Web browser because I am totally hooked on its extensibility. It may not be the greatest browser in the whole, entire universe straight out of the box (though it’s a damn good one), but once you’ve tricked it out with extensions and Greasemonkey scripts specific to what you use your browser for, nothing else will do. I simply can’t use Safari or Opera, no matter how many people tell me it’s faster or better integrated with other Mac applications or better at rendering certain websites, because . . . where’s the Greasemonkey? How am I going to add Convo and GMail Manager and save my browsing sessions and, and, I can’t even describe to you what modifications I’ve got on this application, because I don’t ever think about them unless I have to use someone else’s computer, and then that person’s browser—even if it’s Firefox, too, but without the exact same array of extensions and preference settings—is just broken. Continue reading “Integrate Firefox with your text editor” →

How and When to Wear a Tuxedo Wrapper

India5 Comments

A very fine resource got written up on the Craft: blog the other day, and I expected to see it all over the interdesignweb within hours. Since such ubiquitization does not yet seem to have occurred, I hereby draw your attention to the Indiana University Libraries’ photolicious Making a [Casebound] Book. This article is just one small part of the utterly nerdtastic Repair and Enclosure Treatments Manual, which is all about the care, feeding, and restoration of books.

This, FYI, is a tuxedo wrapper:

tuxedo wrapper

My favorite part of the manual, though, is this gem of an unanswered query, on the tuxedo wrapper intro page:

criteria:

The criteria for this enclosure are…

…OK, what ARE the criteria for this enclosure?

Clearly, the question to ask yourself is, Where will this book be going? Mrs. Post prescribes a Tuxedo for the following forms of social engagement:

1. At the theater.
2. At most dinners.
3. At informal parties.
4. Dining at home.
5. Dining in a restaurant.

Remember: “If ever in doubt what to wear, the best rule is to err on the side of informality. Thus, if you are not sure whether to put on your dress suit or your Tuxedo, wear the latter.”

Now you know.

Mac-based Webheads: What tools do you use?

India21 Comments

Bridget got me rambling about Web development tools on another thread, and now I’m wondering what the kids are using to write their Web sites these days. Over there, we mentioned Nvu, Dreamweaver, GoLive, BBEdit, and TextMate.

I use BBEdit myself, but it’s kind of pricey and I’m not a big fan of the user interface (though I haven’t upgraded to the latest version, on which the interface may finally be better; I’m just sick of paying for upgrades all the time). I’d probably prefer a dedicated Web editor, but nothing that offers only WYSIWYG. (I have never met a WYSIWYG editor that generated code I would use on my dog’s site. If I had a dog.) Suggestions?

Also, for those of you who use Firefox and have tricked it out with Web development–related extensions, bookmarklets, and Greasemonkey scripts, what accoutrements are you sporting? Continue reading “Mac-based Webheads: What tools do you use?” →

Thank you, Microsoft!

India3 Comments

Now I will never have to buy any of your products again!

The latest issue of Editorium Update has arrived, and Jack Lyon reports the following:

Word 2008, for Macintosh, isn’t out yet but will be later this year:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-09MacworldPR.mspx

Like Word 2007 for Windows, it will feature the Ribbon interface, with all of the drawbacks I discussed in the previous newsletter:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1720752173

But there’s one more drawback that will be utterly devastating: No more recording, programming, or even running of macros.

(hysterical emphasis mine)

No macros.

No. Macros. At all.

According to this Macworld article, you’ll be able to do macro-type-things using Applescript and Automator and whatever—I confess that I have not tried to wrap my head around that stuff at all yet; go ahead; suspend my Geek license—but if I have to write my own scripts, why the fuck would I write them to control Word? If I’m going to put that kind of effort into something, obviously it would make more sense to trick out a free word processor than a piece of overpriced bloatware from a company that has demonstrated time and time again that it doesn’t want my business.

Duh.