Editor positions, The New York Post

Then again this is the Post, so don't you just need to know how to blow up a photo and come up with a usually tacky title?

 

We're a tab, too, and do a lot of what the Post does, but it takes time to do a decent front.

 

I didn't say it didn't take time. I'm saying the formula is ready-made.

 

Unless you want to do more than the usual formula.

 

Quark, Indesign, CCI, they all have enough similiarities. If you can use one, you can learn to use the others.
As for design being easy. It's as easy as you want to make it, but judging by some of the Post designs, I imagine photoshop, illustrator, etc. skills may come in handy.

 

Write-Brained, I'm sorry you don't grasp the absolute genius of the NYP.

 

Basic design really isn't all that tough. Look at what others do, get an idea for it and give it a shot.
Didn't have to do much design at all for a long time. When I moved to my current shop, had to do the sections. Took a few days to learn the basics, bought a "for dummies" book to reference when needed and about a month in was doing pretty well.

I'm no top-flight, fancy designer now by any means. But most the time that's not needed -- at least where I'm at. I just make it clean, crisp and simple. Maybe that's because it's all I can do. But it's also something I like.

Like anything, learn by doing.

Come on and take a trip, IJAG ... I'll teach ya no problem.

 

You have a list of stories and elements (charts, photos), page deadlines and a hierarchy from a supervisor. Since there really aren't right or wrong design answers within certain parameters, just go though the list and check them off (I left a prep story out of a later zone one night; that wasn't ideal). And anything much beyond the norm would need input from the graphics/art department anyway.

 

Lots of people, if you gave them a glove and some cleats, could play center field for an inning or two in a MLB game. Very few do it well. Building a section front at a major metro is a little different than just "being able to do it". I've done this for 12 years and I'd still be a little less than cautiously optimistic about my ability to design something that many people see on a daily basis.

That said, building pages in InDesign is like building pages in Photoshop. You go from such a basic level of control and options with Quark to the ability to do everything from creating transparencies to clipping on the fly to working with optimal kerning and tracking. If you think back to the rudimentary shit we were doing in PageMaker in the mid-90s that's pretty freaking insane.

 

What's the latest here??? This gig still open???

 

InDesign is a very intuitive program and pretty easy to use.

Layout is easy to learn. Design is not. You need to have an eye for it and it is something that you need to develop and hone over a period of time.

What we're really talking about with this job is something else, and that's TABLOID PRESENTATION.

Tabloid presentation is a totally different animal. The New York Times has a beautiful sports section, but you can't take the same ideas there and apply it to the New York Post. The NYP doesn't take a nice, big artistic shot and slap it across five columns with a centered 48-point serif head.

You're talking about a much smaller canvas to work on (smaller still since the Post started using the WSJ presses) and finding ways to cram 10 pounds of shit into a 5-pound bag while making it exciting and compelling. It's about making the picture (and cropping it correctly, a vastly underrated skill) and making it work with the stories and the headline and layout and the captions.

There aren't many tabloids in this country, so there aren't many good tabloid editors. There's a reason why the New York tabs have extremely hands-on foreign editors.

 

10 pounds of shit and cram into into a 5-pound bag.

Only one person I know ever has used that phrase. This isn't "BALLS" is it?

Anyhoo, you're right about the cramming. Being at a tab, I do the daily cramming of shit. Worse, on the worst design platform ever fucking invented.