I have been the Layout Editor for the Schoolcraft Connection for almost a year and a half now and part of the layout staff in general for close to two years. My time here has been pretty great. I’m starting my career off doing what I love, I get paid well, the hours are flexible and the experience will not only look good on a resume, but has helped me improve my skills as a designer.
Working on laying out the paper each week has helped me a lot with my design skills. I’ve learned a lot of tricks and tactics to work quicker and reach my goals by various deadlines such as hotkeys, consistently in formatting, layers and how to reuse assets without making a design look the same.
Obviously, these things come with time and practice, but one of the reasons this position has specifically helped me work quicker is because of its deadlines.
As the Layout Editor, my job is to lay out pages and put the paper together at the end of each issue’s production cycle. But to start putting the paper together, I need all the assets. While I get several weeks to put each issue together, I often don’t get ads, stories, or even a final page count until the final week of production. This crunch time has helped me learn to work quicker and more efficiently without sacrificing quality and that is a skill I am very grateful for.
I have enjoyed my time here a lot and do not regret the experience in the slightest.