My Visit To The Daily News
I had my come to Jesus moment, my aha moment at the conference table of the Daily News last Tuesday. My aha moment was when Paul Kim, the Creative Director at The Daily News, explained his hiring process. It was then I thought to myself, why not me? I know most students aha moments might have been when they learned about a new software or seeing the office. But being a person who doubted myself in what it took to apply for a job or even an internship as a Graphic Designer then hiring Paul explain what he looked for when he hired people like Mike and Katrina as Graphic Design Interns made me feel, why not me. Aha, I can do this too.
Two teams I learned were UI which is short for user interface while UX is short for user experience. Taking away from the simplest form of how Paul explained the two, UI is the style, look, layout of the website and UX is how effectively the audience is able to navigate around the website. If I got this definition wrong its okay because according to Jen, the Senior Web Designer at The Daily News, most people even Human Resource usually confuse the terms when posting job descriptions for the position.
I learned about some new softwares so that was a plus. Jeff, another Senior Web Designer at the Daily News, spoke about Sketch. Sketch is a design software tool similar to the Adobe Suite but all in one, simpler to use and preferred by the design team at The Daily News. I believe Sketch is targeted towards web designers but I will still download the trail so I have my own feedback. Another software or app Paul spoke about was Invision. Invision is a tool used by ui, ux and product developers to make their creative ideas interactive before making it live. A graphic designer would design a book cover but for for someone to get an idea of how it would look in real life we place the design on a mock up book. Same thing, Invision is a web designer’s mock up so they can play around and see how everything would look pass paper or dreamweaver. Now fingers crossed I a win their cool free t shirt since I just entered my email on their website.
At the age of twelve if you asked me if I could see myself working at The Daily News the answer would have been yes, yes as a reporter. Today as I study graphic design The Daily News would not be the place of interest for me to work. We only met with the web design team tough so I had a feel for what their daily job entailed. I was never interested in web design. It did spike interest when I heard that they was an advertising team within The Daily News that passed the work to the web designers. I wish we had the chance to meet with the advertising team and learnt what their task included within a newspaper industry.
When I came into 4 New Plaza lobby and realized that we were not only going to tour a web design department but at The Daily News and not at an ad agency as I first thought I was not happy or interested. Touring through the hallways of The Daily News I could not hear our tour guides or even cared to. The only thought I had was why are we here, no one in this class is majoring in web design. My point of view changed within the conference room when I realized that the knowledge and skills the web design team were sharing with us from interviewing, to networking, to our portfolios could all be shared throughout all our disciplines. Even though they are web designers they still get inspiration the same way we do , through Pinterest, mediation, a run, networking events, following influencers within the design field on social media. At the end of the day we all have to be problem solvers. I was glad for the opportunity to tour The Daily News and hear the advice the web design team had to share with us.
