Mark's comment that really put me off was: "This seems more like a simple desk-top publisher type of job and not a graphic designer job. Why are we doing this?" Editor piped up and said "We thought this would be a good opportunity for your group to get company-wide exposure."
Anyway I turn this Mark ends up sounding like a useless and bad anything, because he is either
A) a graphic designer that does a bad job and doesn't want to 'lower' itself by doing a dtp work (that he's doing baddly),
B) a DTP in denial that can't do his job properly,
C) someone with unrelated formation that was dragged into this and should ask out instead of doing a poor job,
or D) someone with unrelated formation that asked in and realised it's actually work and doesn't want to admit he's not good at it.
And for A to D, he doesn't seem to want to improve anyway.
I mean, unless Kathy changed her layout everytime or that he doesn't know how to use an Indesign template (or the software you use), there's no reason he could mess it up so much. Or he wanted to do his own thing, thinking it was the design of the century, but can't take criticism.
Bold above plus A is my take on his attitude.
As for the template, there are creative things that he can do to change things up a bit, there is some freedom of design. However, as with any publication, there are certain rules that must be followed in order to make the entire magazine look like one cohesive piece instead of a sloppy hodge-podge just thrown together.
It seems to me that Mark is taking the "some freedom of design" to a whole new level. I do think he want's to make a statement, trying to say that he's great and the old way of doing the mag is not.
It would be different if I could simply say "Add space between photo and body copy, this is the standard rule" or "Please color-correct this photo and take out the wall switch in the background" or "Add a 1 pt. rule between stories." I have no problem with correcting CWs (in my office) or making suggestions like this.
But it's the actual, horrible, "Are you serious?" type of layout work he's done that really makes me question his background.
Graphic Artists -- you would appreciate this -- This past issue, there was a photo of 6 people in a pyramid (3 on bottom on hands and knees, 2 on top of their backs then one on top.) Mark cropped the full page color photo so that the girl-on-top's head was chopped off. THEN, he ghosted her head in grayscale and ran the body copy over her face. (When Boss saw this she said "It looks like she died! Is she suppose to be in heaven?")
It's (ahem
) design(?) elements like this that I seriously don't know how to address.
(Forgive my ramblings
)
I have stated my desire to take over the entire magazine, but my workload is way to heavy as it is. Plus:
Of course, they may still have some weird boss-logic for still wanting Mark to do half of it, and that's their prerogative
Yeah, the weird boss-logic. They want all like-departments across the company to start sharing jobs.
The design process always includes feedback and changes to the initial design. ALWAYS. It's rare that something is completely done on the first round. Part of learning to be a designer is learning to accept criticism.
LOL! How true is that!
Can you send the marked up improved copy to the editor and let the editor send it to Mark?
This is what happened yesterday morning. There was a specific note in the mark-up that I made "When you get to this point, please contact me. There is an error in your style sheet that needs to be fixed." I haven't heard from Mark concerning this.
Editor requested a corrected layout sometime today.
I haven't heard anything, so hopefully Editor is taking charge.
I'll keep you posted.
