POSITION RELEVANT #3 (Piers) Flashcards
Why work here?
Passionate about design/AD books. Travel.
Devoted career to design & AD of books.
Avid traveler During Covid Mexico 2x outdoor vacas.
Hot Springs tour of Iceland
Dream job to me. Suited to strengths/talents.
Design process
Info/specs
Research
Rough no judgment
Narrow down directions
refine
present
refine
Strengths/About Me
Passion Devoted career to Ad and D books. Travelnut—other cultures
Years experience. 150+ books. Pool of designers for freelance work.
Hit Ground Running Self-starter. Short Learning curve.
Templates, Styles, GREP. More efficient and consistent.
Creative & Strategic Equally comfortable. Both sides of brain.
Problem Solver Both Design & Process. Efficient.
Strong partnerships with other depts. Like working with me. Book building team effort.
Strong work ethic. Best Book. Deadlines. Above and Beyond
Why Hire me not others? About
Passion Devoted career to Ad and D books. Travelnut—other cultures
Years experience. 150+ books. Pool of designers for freelance work.
Hit Ground Running Self-starter. Short Learning curve.
Templates, Styles, GREP. More efficient and consistent.
Creative & Strategic Equally comfortable. Both sides of brain.
Problem Solver Both Design & Process. Efficient.
Strong partnerships with other depts. Like working with me. Book building team effort.
Strong work ethic. Best Book. Deadlines. Above and Beyond
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Not job hopper.
Developing team relationships important, takes time.
In 5 years, imagine being here.
Probably a more senior position.
Biggest Mistake
Situation: Publisher hired me for a redo of a book by Thic Nat Hanh. Got the brief on Friday. Sketches were due Monday.
Action: Feedback different teams inconsistent.
Did best to address all concerns.
More rounds back and forth. Finally approved.
THEN found out monks in monestary needed to approve
No input up until now. Not approved. Kill fee.
Result: I learned not to move forward or spend time until I had good clear direction.
Now always ask for clarification/consensus on feedback.
Also ask about approval process.
ta ka ra gawa onsen
From 2010, repeated Jan 22
Gunma Prefecture
Iceland Hot springs tour last year.
6 hot springs, from the touristy to the hike in.
Weakness
Situation: Sometimes hard to stay engaged with repetitive tasks.
Action: Rely on templates and font, paragraph, object styles. Alos Learned GREP to automate certain actions. E.g. automating bold lead style before certain punctuation.
Result: Compelled to find better way faced with something that frustrates me. More efficient. Allows more time on creative process.
Failure/Do differently—Asana
Situation: First joined last company, not used to reading deadlines on Smartsheets. Nearly missed a few minor deadlines. Typically 5-10 deadlines a day. Working late hours to keep up.
Action: Manually added my deadlines to Asana. Color coded for task priority and book title
Result: Able to easily prioritize my workload. But still issue of human error. So devised a system to export schedule from Smartsheets, auto transpose the data, then import into Asana. Could have realized I needed a new system earlier. Saved months of angst.
Obstacle/Prob Solving—Illo Schedule
Situation: Auto lllo schedules based on dependencies were off. Sometimes illos due after went to printer. People were manually adjusting, taking hours.
Action: Spreadsheets to easily auto calculate dates, revise illo schedules.
Result: Shared with team, make everyone’s process more efficient.
Obstacle/Prob Solving—Page Counts
Situation: Editors struggling with accurate page counts. No tools.
Action: Spreadsheets dividing down into sections, and using different word count.
Result: Shared with editors. Able to more accurately calculate page count
Could have done better
Situation: First joined last company, not used to reading deadlines on Smartsheets. Nearly missed a few minor deadlines. Typically 5-10 deadlines a day. Working late hours to keep up.
Action: Manually added my deadlines to Asana. Color coded for task priority and book title
Result: Able to easily prioritize my workload. But still issue of human error. So devised a system to export schedule from Smartsheets, auto transpose the data, then import into Asana. Could have realized I needed a new system earlier. Saved months of angst.
Current with Design Trends
Communication Arts, Print
Online: Dribble, TheDieline (package)
Behance, Siteinspire (web)
Q: Most important things looking for in ideal candidate?
Show how you meet those quals
Most difficult aspects of this job?
