Category Archives: New York Times

Drawing Power at The Times

Sketchbook Obsession at The New York TimesThe latest exhibition at The New York Times art department’s 7th floor gallery space is called Sketchbook Obsessions, and it opens tomorrow evening, Thu 16 Jul, at 7:00p. If you’re in New York and can make it, you’re more than welcome to do so — just send an R.S.V.P. as soon as you can.

This show is all about sketchbooks, and it features a blizzard of pages from the sketchbooks of some of the brightest names in design and illustration. I’ve been watching my colleagues here as they’ve been hanging the show over the past couple of weeks, and it looks great. The wall is literally covered with countless amazing doodles, and it really captures that immediate, raw energy of unconstrained sketching, the instantaneous transmittal of ideas to paper via pencil. It’s going to be a fun show, and best of all it’s free.

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In Today’s Times

Fun fact: page A20 of today’s New York Times features an illustration that I did for the letters column. It’s my first illustration to appear in the paper — not that I really consider myself an illustrator, but I did study the trade at art school, so I’m pretty happy when I can provide some resolution to those hopeful early years of dreaming about appearing in the Times. This piece accompanies reader letters responding to an article that ran on 18 Mar about jurors triggering mistrials through unauthorized use of search and social media. It’s a simple idea executed as simply as I could manage.

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Patrick Thomas at The New York Times

Oof, I’m embarrassingly late on posting about this: English-born, Barcelona-based illustrator Patrick Thomas will be featured in a one-man exhibition at The New York Times building here in New York City.

This is something that is going to happen very soon. And when you see me say “very soon” in this context, you should read that as “The show’s opening reception is tonight, at 7:00 PM, hors d’œuvres served.” So if you’re here in the city and have a penchant for gorgeously screened, conceptually challenging graphic design as commentary, you should R.S.V.P. and come on by, meet the artist and mingle a bit with the Times art department. I’ll be there.

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Read All About It

Starting today, visitors to NYTimes.com have the option of seeing an enhanced version of our home page that we call Times Extra. This alternate view of the same editorial slate adds links to related coverage from third-party news sources and blogs — right there beneath our main news stories.

Now, I haven’t been posting much about what we’ve been up to at the Times because there’s been so much good stuff (like our voter mood gauge from election night, our holiday shopping guide from David Pogue and our overhauled video library, among many others) that I didn’t want to overrun this blog with press releases.

False modesty aside, I’m making an exception for Times Extra because, well first I think it’s a quiet breakthrough that’s pretty neat, and second, because it’s a concept that I personally hatched on the side with my Times colleague Philippe Lourier, the brains behind our Blogrunner aggregation engine. It was originally something of a lark so we’re pretty happy that it’s finally seeing the light of day (as a beta experiment). Of course, it would still be nothing more than an intriguing idea without the many, many hours of additional dedication from the designers, editors, technologists, the ace project manager and the hard-driving product manager that joined our campaign to make this happen. For their long hours, patience and dedication, I’m incredibly grateful.

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Game On

Back in 2007, during the initial burst of enthusiasm for the Wii, I bought one, thinking that perhaps there was the soul of a gamer lying dormant inside me. After playing with it for several months, though, I essentially got bored, and haven’t much touched it recently. Today it sits in my living room, hooked up but usually forgotten.

In spite of this inability to muster a sustained interest in video games, I’m savvy enough at least to recognize that very interesting things are happening in that world. As a point of reference for interaction design — for design of every kind — I’m convinced that games represent an important new paradigm that people, like me, pay insufficient attention to at our own peril.

Forget design, even. As a subset of our culture, video games are clearly headed to center of the conversation, where it’s not inconceivable that one day they might shoulder aside old media mainstays like television and newspapers, or even eclipse plain-vanilla Interweb browsing. The inherent power of the concept of play shouldn’t be underestimated.

There’s no shortage of intelligent thinking about this field being written in all corners of the Web. For someone like me though, who remains essentially disconnected from gaming, validation still bubbles up through the mainstream media. And lately, I’ve been noticing increasingly thoughtful writing about video games in some of my favorite publications.

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People Wanted

Some NYTimes.com-related business today…

First, there’s a pretty plum job opening with T Style Magazine, the Sunday insert that has become a closely watched showcase for luxury design. The magazine launched an online version last year that, I think all of us involved would agree, is an imperfect first step in marrying the singular immersive qualities of the print edition with an authentically digital experience.

That’s why this position could be so influential. As Janet Froelich, the magazine’s creative director, describes it, “The focus of this position is to oversee the translation of the design approach of the print publication to the Web.” It’s a pretty unique job that requires publication design skills, a refined typographic sense and a good eye for photography — and a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of the Web. We’re essentially looking for someone to really help shape how a luxury magazine expresses itself online. By my guess, there are less than a dozen people in the world qualified for this job; if you’re one of them, send your résumé and cover letter to A. J. Rourk.

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Please Don’t Hold Our Job Board Against Us

Are you a designer in need of a job? Well, we need designers at the NYTimes.com design group, almost as bad as we need a new interface for our job board. Sometimes the board works, and sometimes it doesn’t, so when I post this link to a description for a position I need to fill soon, you’ll have to forgive me if happens to not be functioning properly when you click on it. Enterprise software is like that.

Okay, to be honest the board is terrible. But that shouldn’t reflect poorly on the job opportunity — the opportunity is a really great one. We’ve got a really, really terrific team and we’re doing fascinating, challenging and very rewarding work. And we also happen to be working at the greatest news company on the planet. In my opinion.

I could actually run the full description of the job here, but I’ve learned in the past that people tend to submit their résumés regardless of their suitability to whatever bullet points I point them to. Usually, they just respond to the title, which in this case is “Web Designer.” Still, I’ll supplement it here with this advice: if you’re a fantastic Web designer, then we want you. And you really have to be fantastic. I’m serious. Also, you have to be clever enough to be able to figure out how our crazy job board works.

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