Super Tuesday starts in five minutes. Twenty-four states of primary action. Woo hoo! I just want to remind people voting in those states to bring along your cameras to take snapshots for The Polling Place Photograph Project, a collaboration between my employer, The New York Times, AIGA and Bill Drenttel. Snap a shot of your polling place and help us document democracy in action.

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Readers voting in New Hampshire’s primaries today, make sure to bring along your cameras: The New York Times has just re-launched the Polling Place Photo Project, “a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this year’s primaries, caucuses and general election.”

Sharp design observers may recall that this was an idea originated and executed by Bill Drenttel and AIGA during 2006’s mid-term elections. Bill approached us late last year with a proposal to overhaul it as a Times project, in collaboration again with AIGA. The editors really took to the idea to heart, and working with staff here, Bill and AIGA’s technology partner Thirdwave moved mountains to make it happen for this early stage of the campaign.

We quietly and preliminarily put up this site last week during the contest in Iowa, which is actually a caucus and therefore not an ideal subject for the kind of single-frame documentary photography we’re looking for. But New Hampshire is a proper primary with polling machines, and therefore was an ideal kick-off. As the marketing blurbs state, the project will run throughout the primary season and then into the general election — we hope to capture some fascinating visual documentation of democracy in action. When it’s election day in your state, remember to snap a photo to share with us.

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Way back in the day I worked at a place where the boss was kind of a jerk. But, I have to admit, he did at least one thing very well that I cannot take away from him: he documented the progress of his studio with great assiduousness. This included, every few months, getting the whole staff together for a group photo.

When you think about it, you spend so much time with the people at work, maybe even more than you do with members of your own family, during certain periods. And, so often, there is no record of the people with whom you’re sharing that time. That’s why I thought it was so smart to take those photographs periodically; the practice stuck with me.

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Wait, I have more job openings to add to the two I mentioned previously. One of the talented visual designers at NYTimes.com has decided to leave our design group for a terrific position elsewhere. I’m very sad, but her new job represents an exciting new stage for her career so I can’t stand in the way. I’m also proud of the fact that she’s the first among the many talented folks I’ve hired over the past eighteen months to leave the company, and her decision was borne not out of dissatisfaction but rather opportunity. Or that’s what she told me, anyway.

In any event, we’re now looking for a visual designer, too. If you᾿re devotee of beautiful design in all media but have a particular affinity for clean, highly usable interface design for text-heavy content online, you’ll want to apply right away.

As usual, we’re looking for a full-time employee to fill that spot. But in an unusual (for us) turn of events, I also have the budget for a freelance designer to help us out with some special projects for four- to six-months. We’re looking for the same skills in this freelancer as in the designer position above, but if you value the pleasures of independent contracting and the thrill of paying for the escalating monthly costs of your own health insurance, this might just be the gig to get you through the winter. Do up your résumé and submit it via our wonderful enterprise job board.

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Just a note: there are two openings in my design group at NYTimes.com. Before I get to describing them, I want to please ask those of you who are interested to apply through the links I’ve provided below; please don’t email me directly. It will be faster to route your résumé through our human resources department via the links. Trust me.

The first open job is a permanent, full-time position for which I’ve been working on getting approval for a long time: online news designer. This is a role intended to create design solutions for the news — for our home page most often, but also on the site’s various section fronts and other articles. If you’re the kind of person who has what it takes to design something like our recent “Choking on Growth” feature from start to finish, from visual design to code, then you should apply for this job.

The second open job is for a full-time design technologist. That’s our title for what others call ‘developers’ or ‘builders,’ people with that special mix of design sensibility and technological skill who live for harnessing the power of XHTML, CSS and other client-side technologies in service to superior user experiences. Just a warning: you’ll be replacing an extremely gifted design technologist on our team who’s moving on to a new opportunity within the company, so expectations will be high. That’s not to discourage anyone from applying; I just want to emphasize that we’re looking for top shelf people.

In fact, if I might offer a supplemental note, we’re pretty much only looking for top shelf people — and for people who are fun to work with. Modesty aside, this is a great design environment largely because the shared talent and camaraderie are so conducive to good practice. Not only would I stake our talent against just about any interaction design team anywhere (whether an independent shop or another in-house group), but I’d say we have a better time doing the work than just about anyone else, too. There, that’s my pitch!

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