Monday, April 28, 2008

Advanced editing in the real world

I figured I would talk a bit about my application of some of the things I've learned in this course in the real world. While I am a print student, I am angling my career for sports communications and have worked for the Arizona Cardinals and currently the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury.

What I've learned with these positions is that a lot of organizations have no concept of style whatsoever. I can't tell you how much it drives me nuts to see the poorly styled products they put out.

But, thankfully enough, the Suns are not one of these offenders.

For about two months I worked closely with one of my bosses to prepare the Suns' postseason guide -- a 100+ page comprehensive guide to all the statistics and information you could ever want to know about the team. And the entire thing was laid out in Quark.

Since I had experience with Quark from class, I became essentially the primary designer of the guide (though a lot was template) and threw together the literature my boss wrote.

I got a couple of pats on the back for my attention to detail... things like margin sizes, consistency and so on... the same things Professor Thornton drilled into our heads this semester.

And while it was a bit of a change of pace from newspaper layouts, the experience I gained from this project I count as no less valuable. I also hope that the work I put into the guide will help others pay a bit more attention to their own work (the San Antonio Spurs' postseason guide would best be used as toilet paper... not just because it's the Spurs).

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