Sunday, April 27, 2008

What it takes to work at NYTimes.com Khoi Vinh, design director of NYTimes.com, has been answering questions from readers for the past week. One of those readers, Omar Yacoubi, offered the question our Web design students are most likely to ask: Q. What course of study would you recommend at the graduate or undergraduate level for someone looking to work in your field? Or, failing that, what practical experience do you think most prepared you for your current job? The design director answered in terms of what he looks for when hiring, not in terms of a literal "course of study" -- but he went beyond design and technology to a couple of "skills" that make me glad Radford's Web design curriculum and the journalism curriculum are in the same school. One is "sound news judgment based on a deep understanding of current affairs"; the other is an ability to give "plainspoken explanations" of the tasks at hand. Here's the full text of his answer to that question... I've added italics to indicate the whole block is a quote, and I've broken part of it into bullet points and highlighted a couple of things. But don't miss the full Q&A column, which runs to nine pages if "printed" as a PDF file. Khoi Vinh: "It's actually quite a complex mix of varied skills: an ideal applicant would have very strong traditional graphic design skills; in-depth training in usability and interaction design; practical experience coding XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and Flash; a commercially viable comfort level with database and application programming; and last but not least sound news judgment based on a deep understanding of current affairs. "Mind you, almost nobody possesses this exact combination of skills. If there's a school or curriculum somewhere that's turning out these kinds of candidates regularly, I'd be very interested to know. (Besides, I tend not to pay nearly as much attention to where a candidate was schooled as I do to that candidate's portfolio of work samples and practical experience.) "So obviously I look for people who can combine as many of these skills as possible. I'm not sure it would be fair to say that any one skill is more important than the other because they're all vital, but I can say that having a particularly weak foundation in traditional graphic design -- lacking an understanding of typography, color, composition and visual storytelling -- more or less disqualifies one immediately. "There are a few other intangible qualities that I look for, too. The ability to effectively articulate one's ideas about design is a big plus; translating design's subjective nuances into plainspoken explanations is a critical requirement for this job. Agile problem-solving skills are also an imperative; being able to think about a design problem in a larger context than one's own role as a designer only makes it easier to pull off ambitious solutions. And maybe most important of all is enthusiasm for the work; there's no substitute for a designer who feels truly invested in the work." Here's that link to the full article again. Related links: Khoi Vinh's personal site Subtraction 7.0 currently discussing his own problems keeping up with online news November '07 Q&A with Web newsroom editor Fiona Spruill June '07 Q&A with digital news editor Jim Roberts 8:13:34 PM    comment []

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