Tag Archives: In the Workplace

In the Workplace: Spring 2011 Edition Round-Up

We recently showcased the talent of professional writers, editors, and designers in the Spring 2011 edition of our In the Workplace series. Today we’ll take a look back at their answers to the question:

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers, editors, and designers?

“Never, ever, ever take a job for the money. Just when I think I’ve learned this lesson, I fall back in the hole and end up hating myself, the publication, the world. Only pick the jobs and assignments that are going to make you proud.” — Alissa Walker, Freelance writer

“I’m sure you’ve heard this one before — write regularly. Or if you design, design regularly. It’s the only way to keep your skills sharp and your audience engaged. Also, expose yourself to a lot of newness. New news, new people, new places, new ideas. It spurs creativity and gives you interesting content and perspective. Newness can also mean variety. I’ve noticed that some of the best writers and designers I’ve met have built up experience in many sizes, formats, and mediums.” — Tim Gasper, Keepstream co-founder / The Appconomy contributor

“Be a student of your industry. Read/look at as much work from others in your industry as you can to see how the pros are doing it. Start some kind of “inspiration spot” where you save photos or links or samples of things that inspire you so you can reference them later. But probably the most important thing is to just get out there and create something. Write a blog, take photos, redesign ads or publications you like, just practice your craft and set it free for others to see. You’ll learn the most when you have to stand behind content you’re creating.” — Becky Johns, Account Executive, Agency Communications at Cramer-Krasselt / Freelance Photographer

“Be true to yourself, your skills, and your internal motivations. Be confident in yourself in order to take steps to be doing exactly what you want to be doing. If it were easy, everyone would be doing fine art or publishing a magazine. Having faith in yourself, finding the benefit in what you’re doing, and staying optimistic are the most important things.” — Chad Kouri, Maker and Doer

Thank you to all our featured professionals who gave us a glimpse into the work they do, from how they create and communicate in their job to how they define professional writing. For more inspiration, be sure to check out all our interviews with young professionals.

In the Workplace with Chad Kouri

Name: Chad Kouri
Title: Maker and Doer
Website/Blog: www.longliveanalog.com
Location: Chicago, IL


Photo by Andy Schwegler of Letterform

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I came to Chicago for school in 2003 to study graphic design. Before I moved here to study, I knew I didn’t have enough money to finish a four-year program, so I took all the design classes I could at Columbia and then jumped out and got an internship, which turned into a job at a marketing firm. I was there 4-5 years on and off and progressed my way up to a Junior Art Director for a very small company. Overall, my experience was that I really liked the people I was working with and the family atmosphere, but the work I was doing wasn’t very rewarding. So I started pursuing some of the things I was doing in my free time like custom typography and collage work to see if that was something I could pursue that would pay the bills and not just occupy the space in between doing the work I paid my bills with.

That was about three years ago. Another thing that motivated me to make a change was the inception of The Post Family a year previous to that. The Post Family is a group of seven creative, like-minded people, mostly from design backgrounds, that wanted to kind of get away from being on our computers for 14-16 hours a day and have a studio space where we can get together and come up with concepts and ideas to fuel our creativity on our “passion projects”, things we do in our own pursuit of general happiness. We had just gotten a space and everyone was pushing hard in our networks to make people aware of what we were doing. There’s a pretty large community of support around the idea of pursuing these kinds of goals—making things because you want to and expressing yourself through creativity in place where it’s not being forced upon you. It was fairly easy for me to really kick it into high gear and utilize some of the network I had developed over the past couple of years and jump out of the job. For a year I basically did a week of work a month at a design company to pay the bills, and the rest of the time was spent on screen printing, doing collage work, and donating time and working with Proximity Magazine, which is a very impressive, thorough quarterly contemporary art magazine in the city here.

That went on for a little while and then Edelman PR contacted me and said they really liked what I was doing within the design and art community, my illustration work, and my mindset on creativity. They said they would like for me to work for them, but they didn’t really know what I would be doing. That was about a year ago. It took us a little time to figure out exactly what the position would entail, but now I’m their Artist in Residence.

Tell us about your current job.
I work mostly from home, typically 20-30 hours a week for Edelman on everything from new business pitches to helping curate artwork throughout the office. They bring me in for general creation of ideas and to figure out how to not only have people feel like they’re in a creative atmosphere within the workplace, but also to reinvigorate some of their business pitches with different, more interactive ways of presenting to potential clients rather than just projecting a screen on a wall.

With The Post Family guys, our space has evolved to a gallery and studio space. I help coordinate events and do general promotion for the group. I also do studio tours of different artists’ space that I photograph and interview for the website just to add another layer of transparency to what everyone’s doing. That’s what we’re all about, and I think it’s a midwest/Chicago mentality of “all for one”. Everyone is willing to share skills and knowledge for the greater good of the community. I’ve been participating a lot in the art happenings around here as well. I’m trying to focus a lot more on developing a larger body of fine art work so I can start showing more often with different people. I’m finding out that generally I try to make things as difficult as possible for myself and see if I can get out of it. Fine art is the next wall to climb, which I’ve been enjoying.

What does a typical day look like for you?
I try to have a “No meetings before 10:30″ rule. Sometimes that doesn’t work, but I know I’m much better in the later part of the morning because I typically work until 1 or 2am when I can get the most work accomplished. So I usually get up around 10—hopefully not to an alarm—and then go to my home studio to organize things. I usually spend most of the morning doing correspondence—keeping up with people, making sure email is answered. The second half of the day is more focused on either commissioned work as an individual illustrator or work for Edelman. That’s about 60% of the day, and the other 40% is general exploring and ideation time. I typically have a notebook open all day as I’m thinking about different ideas and concepts. If I have something that comes to mind, I try to facilitate the time to at least get it down so I can come back to it. I also try to leave little bits of free time throughout the day to just let my mind wander and see what happens. I tend to doodle a lot too, though I’m finding out more and more that doodling is working.

Overall, it’s more of an organic work schedule where if I’m having a hard time working on something, I step away from it for a while and don’t try to pound it out. You’re not always going to have that opportunity, but keeping it a bit looser has been really beneficial for my process. That seems to help ideas happen a little bit quicker rather than sweating it out for a week.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
At Edelman I’ve done everything from redesigning new business pitches (PowerPoint templates) to interoffice communication stuff that is a little bit more fun and loose, such as illustrations for the employee recognition boards. I also do some concepting for problem-solving initiatives. If we have a big problem that comes in from a client, I figure out different scenarios so people can get together and brainstorm in a quick fashion. There’s everything from highly conceptual ideas to very bare bones at Edelman.

As for myself, most of what I’m creating right now is a lot of collage work, a lot of fine art work. I’m developing concepts and ideas into a body of work. I also do typography work for individuals, lately for music people who are looking for custom lettering for their website or promotions. But mostly I’m just trying to create collaboratively and set up scenarios to meet with other people and have free-form experiment in creating stuff. I’m doing a little traveling this summer to do video work with some friends in LA, and hopefully I’ll be in New York at the end of September with some other friends doing the same thing. So not so much individual documents, but more of a free-form body of work.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
I really enjoy the problem solving at Edelman. You not only have to figure out a solution to a problem, but you also have to figure out how to communicate that solution to an array of different people who have different ways of communicating. It makes for an interesting back and forth, and it takes a lot more work to push through a big idea. You have to make sure that not only is the idea good, but that you are willing to put forth the time to fight for it to come to fruition. That’s been really interesting for me, to develop my communication skills with talking and selling ideas to different people. It’s also helped in the gallery sense because if I have some kind of situation, I’m more on my toes about figuring out how to solve that problem and communicating with that person to make them feel more comfortable.

How did you prepare for your job?
Everything about me, and The Post Family as well, is that we try to be organic in our processes: let things live, let things breathe, and see what happens. Being able to roll with the punches and not really having a specific plan means you can’t really fail. There aren’t any personal expectations to live up to and you have broader ideas of what’s best. Also, being an optimist—what’s the worst thing that can happen? Even if a job goes terribly, there’s absolutely something there and probably more to learn from than something that went perfectly well. So I’m always optimistic that things will turn around.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.
Google Image Search is pretty ridiculously awesome. I probably use it every single day on every project I do, just to get some visual stimulation. I can put in one word and there will be so many different images that may not even relate to that word that draw my attention to different places. I don’t typically use those images in what I’m creating, so for my collages and other work, the Library of Congress has a great digital archive that is mostly public domain or Creative Commons. Flickr Groups for vintage ads have also proven to be full of high-res old imagery that is public domain now.

My email—my email is chaos. I have four different email addresses for different jobs that I do and it’s great to be able to work on everything at once. Everyone can get a hold of me and I can be plugged in from anywhere, so that’s been super beneficial. Early on, email was something I was utilizing. I would go out to Borders and look in the credits of magazines for the email addresses of art directors and publishers and then just cold email. I was able to develop this really rough community of people whose work I really enjoyed, and maybe there was a possibility they would like mine. It’s proven to be a really good tool. I emailed a woman that I met in San Francisco last July at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art. I met her there—she was the buyer for the gift shop—I introduced myself, wrote her an email when i got home from the business card she gave me, and told her it was nice to meet her, here is some of the work I do, hope to be in touch. She emailed me and The Post Family today about a potential project that we could do together.

When you send that email, just because someone doesn’t get back with you right away doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention to you. Keep in touch really does mean keep in touch. I have people I emailed four or five years ago who are just now reaching out to me to push forward on a project. You just never know what kind of contacts you can make with a simple thing like email.

How do you stay up to date in your field?
I used to do a lot of blog reading but ever since I started writing a blog, it’s worked its way out of my routine. But I do go through link sets from the blogs that I used to read or other artists that I know, who typically have a list of friends. I’ve developed ideas just through those links from random artists.

But in general, the easiest way to stay up to date is through the community. Just talk to people about what they’re doing, what they’ve seen. I’m lucky enough to have friends and a group of people around me who are into the same things and this is what we do, we nerd out and talk. I hold a lot of confidence in knowing what’s hip through the people I know and what they’re looking at.

How would you define professional writing?
When I think of professional writing, I really think of writing as an art form. If you’re able to explain your ideas or your concepts in a very concise way on paper, the possibilities are endless because you’re able to not only explain it in a way that is easy for people to understand, but then people can explain it easily to others. It’s much easier to spread an idea and a concept.

Everyone thinks, at some point, that they’re a writer or a designer or a photographer, but there’s a craft and a knowledge that you need in order to do this. I would say one of the most important pieces to any concept is to have professionally written content that can spread. A picture might say a million words, but if you can spread a story and a narrative to other people, an actual grounding and concept, that’s much more powerful.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
Be true to yourself, your skills, and your internal motivations. Be confident in yourself in order to take steps to be doing exactly what you want to be doing. If it were easy, everyone would be doing fine art or publishing a magazine. Having faith in yourself, finding the benefit in what you’re doing, and staying optimistic are the most important things.

Also, don’t get stagnant. Even if you’re enjoying something so much, you need to keep new ideas coming in. Always be thinking of the next step—it doesn’t always have to be the five-year step, it can be the tomorrow step. Always keep that momentum and be truthful with yourself. In general, try to have a good time while you’re doing it. It has made a world of difference for me in the past couple years.

In the Workplace with Becky Johns

Name: Becky Johns
Title: Account Executive, Agency Communications at Cramer-Krasselt / Freelance Photographer
Website/Blog: http://becky-johns.com
Location: Chicago, IL

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I graduated from Michigan State University in 2009 with a bachelor’s in Advertising and a specialization in Public Relations. I spent my college career dabbling in different areas of the communications field through classes, jobs, and internships. I’ve always been a writer with a natural knack for communicating and I really found a home in the PR world. During college I worked for a PR agency, a media planning company, and selling advertising for the nation’s largest collegiate newspaper. After graduation I worked in corporate communications for a large insurance company and after that joined C-K in January 2011.

Tell us about your current job.
My role in Agency Communications is to promote the work, the people, and the thinking of the agency. Basically, I help out when we’re announcing new business wins, new client campaigns, publishing guest columns or industry-related articles, placing our staff in speaking gigs at conferences, working with the trade publications for the industry, and about a million other things. Most people know about agency PR work on behalf of clients. I do PR on behalf of the agency.

What does a typical day look like for you?
I cruise the news in the morning and send a daily email to our entire agency staff across all offices with helpful articles and links to any coverage C-K is getting, to keep everyone in the loop of when we’re mentioned in the media. That’s really the only consistent part of my job. There’s always a handful of projects going on whether it’s writing press releases, working with writers covering our campaigns, taking photos at agency events, doing research or prepping PR strategies for different agency happenings.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
Press releases, research summaries, content for our agency website and media room, drafts of articles, and much more. In my free time (if you can even call it free time) I write posts for my own blog, guest posts for others, write a weekly column on networking for young professionals, daily articles for Ragan’s PR Daily and freelance articles here and there for other websites.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
I need to be able to communicate well with my boss. We’re a team of two handling efforts for four offices, so she and I need to speak clearly, take good notes and stay on top of email, to-do lists, and keeping each other filled in. It’s very helpful I’m a good writer since I’m communicating with people both internally and externally every day, mostly via email. Media relations skills are essential, knowing how to get the right information to reporters and be helpful to them when they’re looking for information about C-K’s work or clients. It’s also really important to be a good listener and have the ability to gather information from a lot of different people and think about the big picture.

How did you prepare for your job?
I made a big transition joining the agency world. So, I did my best to research the history of the agency, read up on the agency world, and just generally try to soak up as much information as possible during my first few months here since a lot of my colleagues have so much more experience.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.

  1. I read Ragan’s PR Daily (and not just because I’m a contributing editor) and Spin Sucks everyday because they’re both really solid resources for PR pros and keep me current on industry trends and issues. I also check the New York Times Media page, Ad Age, and Mashable a couple times throughout the day to make sure I know what’s going on in the industry.
  2. My Twitter feed delivers me the best news, blog posts, and articles. I don’t follow everyone who follows me, but the people I do follow are constant sources of info-rich links. I’ve spent a lot of time really narrowing it down to the right people. I also have a few private Twitter lists categorized for different types of content: tech stuff, photography stuff, ad industry writers and groups of people in Chicago, Detroit, New York and a few other markets I like to keep tabs on.
  3. HARO (Help a Reporter Out). It’s three emails a day with queries from reporters all over the world looking for sources for their stories. I’d say at least four times per week I find a query I can respond to, I can flag for our client account teams or I can forward onto a friend who would be a great source. Anyone who works in PR needs to be signed up.

How do you stay up to date in your field?
Keeping current on the news everyday for our daily staff email, my Google reader, and my Twitter lists and friends.

How would you define professional writing?
If someone pays you to communicate a message through the written word — and you do it effectively — you’re a professional writer.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
Be a student of your industry. Read/look at as much work from others in your industry as you can to see how the pros are doing it. Start some kind of “inspiration spot” where you save photos or links or samples of things that inspire you so you can reference them later. But probably the most important thing is to just get out there and create something. Write a blog, take photos, redesign ads or publications you like, just practice your craft and set it free for others to see. You’ll learn the most when you have to stand behind content you’re creating.

In the Workplace with Tim Gasper

Name: Tim Gasper
Title: Keepstream co-founder, The Appconomy contributor
Website/Blog: http://keepstream.com
Location: Austin, TX

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
Technology has always been a huge passion of mine, but it took me a while before I really knew which angle I would take to get involved in tech. I went to Case Western Reserve University for Engineering and Physics, but as most college students do, my interests evolved. I ended up graduating with degrees in Economics and Marketing.

More importantly though, the last two years of college I was involved with a startup project. Our first idea was spawned at Startup Weekend, a great event where you go from idea to prototype in a single weekend. The goal is to force you to take the initial step toward becoming a real company — because often that first step is the hardest. The company was called CorkShare at the time, and it was my first experience as an entrepreneur. I was only 19, and I learned more than any class I could have ever taken in college. It taught me to set my own agenda, be accountable to myself, and to do the work that actually impacts your business’s bottom line.

In between college and working on Keepstream and freelance full time, I spent a year working at Hyland Software. They are a business software company for streamlining business processes and helping organizations go paperless by using electronic or scanned documents instead of paper. I was a Software Product Evangelist, becoming an expert on the product and creating a lot of content collateral. A strong focus of the position was on doing presentations, both in person and via online webinars.

Tell us about your current job.
Over the course of three years, CorkShare morphed into Keepstream, where as Co-founder and CMO I do marketing, business development, and community engagement. Keepstream is a social media curation tool that helps organize tweets, Facebook posts, and website bookmarks into shareable, embeddable collection pages. Collections are useful for bloggers, marketers, or just about anyone who wants to curate the chatter from a conference or event, a news headline, or a hashtag chat. Working with startups this long has been hugely rewarding because of how dynamic it is. At any minute I may be working on a different project, whether it’s talking to potential customers, creating marketing collateral, or pitching bloggers and journalists.

I am also a contributor to The Appconomy, where I blog about mobile apps, companies, and trends. The Appconomy’s mission is to serve as your trusted, original source of best practices, profiles, features, and commentary covering the rapid transition to the mobile, app-based economy, aka the appconomy. In addition, I contribute articles to the Austin Examiner on the Austin technology scene and interesting technology trends.

What does a typical day look like for you?
A typical day is usually split about half and half between my freelance activities and my startup work. I like to start early because I’m a coffee addict — my morning joe is my most productive time block and is when most of my heavy duty writing gets done. This represents mostly freelance work. After my morning writing is done, I’ll usually go for a workout.

My co-founders are night owls, so after all this we’re ready to head to the Keepstream office where I’ll wrap up any additional freelance, and then focus on whatever project is most urgent for Keepstream. As of writing this we are preparing to do fundraising, so I’m focusing mostly on drumming up customer interest in preparation for a stronger investor pitch. I usually have a couple meetings with a Keepstream user or potential customer, or coordinating with my freelance employers. Throughout the day I use Boxcar (for notifications) and HootSuite (for conversations and sharing) for social media community engagement.

I usually stay in the office until relatively late. That means not much free time, but the work I do is fun and engaging, which makes the long hours extremely engaging and rewarding.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
I produce a lot of varying work. Examples include blog articles, white papers, web copy, software tutorial videos, fact sheets, presentation slide decks, spreadsheets for tracking initiatives, marketing or business plans, etc.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
First thing that comes to mind is dealing with massive amounts of email, both inbound and outbound. Thank God for Gmail! I have to be quick, to the point, and well organized. I have to work with a lot of different people in a relatively informal way, so I have to clearly communicate expectations, be very transparent about progress, and place a lot of trust into delegation and accountability. In general, I have to be an effective writer and speaker across many mediums and be comfortable regardless of context, whether it’s online, a coffee shop one-on-one, a networking event, or the boardroom.

How did you prepare for your job?
My preparation came mostly from working with other people, both in school and professionally. I did a lot of extracurriculars in school such as the event programming board, marketing club, economics honor society, and others. Writing and communications skills came mostly from school and these extracurriculars. Also, all the jobs I took on during and after school happened to require me to be heavily involved with writing and content creation. You learn by doing.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.
HootSuite: I love any chance I can get to profess my love for HootSuite. Overall, I think it’s the best free social media dashboard and analytics tool out there.

Gobbledygook Grader: Great tool by HubSpot for making sure your writing isn’t full of useless jargon. It also tells you what education level your article targets so you can either smarten it up or dumb it down depending on your audience. David Meerman Scott, who wrote the awesome book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, helped create the tool. He uses the word “gobbledygook” to describe what the rest of us call buzzwords or fluff.

AP Styleguide: It’s the go-to guide for writing style and etiquette for me, especially regarding journalistic formats.

I won’t consider it one of my three, but my company Keepstream gets an honorable mention. It’s a great way to incorporate tweets or other social content into your blog posts and websites. Plus we’ll be moving into a lot of analytics soon that will be super useful to Social Media Managers, PR agencies, and writers… so stay tuned. :)

How do you stay up to date in your field?
RSS and blogs are still the best way to stay up to date in my opinion. I use Twitter for conversations and running into information serendipitously, but I use Google Reader to bring in a consistent flow of good blog articles around Marketing, Technology, and Social Media Measurement. A couple blogs I really like include:

How would you define professional writing?
Good question. I don’t think I’m the best person to answer this question, but I think you can look at it in two ways. One, is writing your primary activity? And two, do you make money from writing? I think the first question gets a little closer to the matter, because I’m sure there are many professional writers with an engaged audience out for more than just making cash. The more you write, the better you are at it, and the cooler your job title, I suppose the more serious people will take you when you say you are a professional writer.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
I’m sure you’ve heard this one before — write regularly. Or if you design, design regularly. It’s the only way to keep your skills sharp and your audience engaged. Also, expose yourself to a lot of newness. New news, new people, new places, new ideas. It spurs creativity and gives you interesting content and perspective. Newness can also mean variety. I’ve noticed that some of the best writers and designers I’ve met have built up experience in many sizes, formats, and mediums.

In the Workplace with Alissa Walker

Name: Alissa Walker
Title: Freelance writer
Website/Blog: Gelatobaby
Location: Los Angeles, CA


Photo by Cicilia Teng

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
My whole life I actually wanted to be in advertising. It’s kind of sick, but I was obsessed with television ads, even though I didn’t watch a lot of TV (maybe that’s why). So I set a very direct course to an advertising degree, which meant I went through the journalism school at the University of Colorado, followed by the advertising program at The Portfolio Center in Atlanta. I was dead set on being either a copywriter or an art director. But something changed once I finished school, I realized I had really fallen in love with writing, and maybe not the ad-making part so much. When I got out of school I tried to get those choice advertising jobs but in 2000 they just didn’t exist anymore due to the dot-com bubble bursting. I took a few freelancing gigs and hated it. So I took a day job at a production studio and tried to write. Well that never works, so three years later I found myself on a trip to Europe all by myself (and eating a lot of gelato), and realizing that if I wanted to write, I had to get serious about it. So I started my totally-serious, writing-only freelance career. Soon after that I got a job as an editor of the design blog UnBeige and my career just took off. That was seven years ago and I’ve never looked back. I love being a writer, I love telling stories, and I love being freelance.

Tell us about your current job.
Right now I’m a freelance writer for several publications. I contribute regularly to GOOD; Fast Company’s new design site, Co.Design; the public radio show DnA: Design and Architecture; and write occasionally for a few others like Dwell, AFAR, and Sunset. I have been writing a blog about design, cities, walking, Los Angeles, and gelato since 2006 named Gelatobaby. I produce and program a lot of events and conferences, including events and parties here in LA for GOOD, as well as the monthly design event design east of La Brea. I’ll be speaking and moderating several panels at the upcoming Dwell on Design conference in June, and I’m also putting together an emerging designer mini-conference for AIGA’s national design conference in Phoenix in the fall. I’m also working on a book of essays about Los Angeles.

What does a typical day look like for you?
I get up around 6:00am and start to sift through the emails which have accumulated in the night. Then I usually start on my toughest or most important writing assignment first thing in the morning when my brain is sharpest. A few days a week I head into the office at GOOD (here in LA) for meetings, but otherwise I’m here at my desk pretty much all day. I also do a lot of field reporting for local stories so I’m often out and about a few days a week, riding my bike or public transportation to various places around Los Angeles. I stop and make a really great lunch with my boyfriend, the graphic designer Keith Scharwath, who also works from our house. I usually work on the weekends, too.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
I would say a vast majority of the pieces I write are blog posts. This is a dramatic shift from only a few years ago when I was producing maybe 75% print pieces and 25% blog. Now the print pieces are definitely the exception. But I actually really prefer writing online pieces: the immediacy is so great, and the ability to share and comment make the story better.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
Freelancers in general need to be very clear about their availability and be able to manage expectations, things I’d say I’m not so talented at. I often take on far more than I can feasibly do and then work far more than is humanly possible. Although I’m not sure it’s a requirement, I am very vigilant about answering emails right away. Again, not sure if that’s necessarily a good thing but it’s something I feel strongly about.

How did you prepare for your job?
I think I took a very roundabout path to my current career (and I say current because it could all change soon!) so I’ve ended up drawing upon many skills that I’ve used throughout my lifetime. One thing that sticks out is my experiences performing in theater and show choirs when I was younger. Public speaking has become a big part of my job and I don’t think I would have been able to do it if I hadn’t been onstage so much as a teenager.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.
The first and foremost is UPOD, a writers’ group started by my friend David Hochman. Here journalists from around the world share information and advice with each other. It’s awesome. And I have to say Twitter is #2: It’s where I get most of my story ideas, and where I’m able to share what I write with an enthusiastic audience. #3 would be my Leica D-LUX 4 camera. I love taking photos and writing about the way I experience Los Angeles on my blog.

How do you stay up to date in your field?
As I mentioned, Twitter is a pretty great tool, as is just reading the blogs of my friends, who are all geniuses in their fields.

How would you define professional writing?
Professional writing is the ability to take an important story and turn it into an unforgettable experience that your enthusiastic readers can’t help but share with their friends.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
Never, ever, ever take a job for the money. Just when I think I’ve learned this lesson, I fall back in the hole and end up hating myself, the publication, the world. Only pick the jobs and assignments that are going to make you proud.

In the Workplace, Spring 2011 Edition

Spring has finally arrived, and to celebrate, beyondwords will be showcasing the talent of professional writers, editors, and designers in the next edition of our “In the Workplace” series.

Our featured professionals will give us a glimpse into the work they do, from how they create and communicate in their job to how they define professional writing.

The Spring series will kick off tomorrow, April 27. Until then, get inspired by browsing our past features of young professionals.

In the Workplace: Fall 2009 Edition Round-Up

beyondwords recently showcased the talent of more professional writers, editors, and designers in the Fall 2009 edition of our “In the Workplace” series. Today we’ll take a look back at their answers to the question:

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?

Emily Wenstrom

Read everything. Know your grammar and style guides. Be adventurous — new experiences strengthen your writing and creativity by broadening your horizons.
Emily Wenstrom | Resident Ink Slinger; Managing Editor

Derek Moore

The biggest piece of advice I can pass along to any creative person is to never ever stop creating and never stop looking for new outlets to create in. Keep loving what you do!
Derek Moore | Web Artist and Co-Founder of Simplify Advance

Luke Capizzo

[B]e an evangelist for good writing. You do this by consistently writing well, but also by helping others to improve their writing and understand the goals of audience-focused communication. The world is growing increasingly more complex, so people who can explain it and help others explain it grow more important every day.
Luke Capizzo | Communications Specialist

Justin Parnell

Despite your experience level, you should maintain a level of anxiety. Anxiety is too often translated as unorganized and unconfident in business, but I’ve always viewed it as severe bleeding of passion. This passion will force you to remain invaluable by never saying no to projects or the smallest of tasks. It will also leave you hungry for ideas and make you want to keep learning.
Justin Parnell | Brand Marketing Designer; Freelance Graphic & Web Designer

Abbe Tykwinski - Work

Don’t think because you don’t have a “creative” job that you can’t be creative. You make your own opportunities. If you feel underutilized, look for ways to go beyond your job description and showcase your talents.
Abbe Tykwinski | Print Production Coordinator

Mark Fulton

Start building up your personal or business brand through social media and industry community websites. Give much more than you take. Sharing is much more rewarding than advertising your own work over and over. Your readers will appreciate your efforts to educate and inform them. They will also pass these resources on to their friends, extending your reach and brand exposure.
Mark Fulton | Web Developer, Domainer, Entrepreneur, Blogger

Thank you to all our featured professionals who gave us a glimpse into the work they do, from how they create and communicate in their job to how they define professional writing. For more inspiration, be sure to check out all our interviews with young professionals.

In the Workplace with Mark Fulton

Name: Mark Fulton
Title: Web Developer, Domainer, Entrepreneur, Blogger
Website/Blog: DotSauce Magazine
Location: Jacksonville, NC

Mark Fulton with sister Rachel Fulton
Mark with sister Rachel Fulton

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
My strongest passion has always been online business, being an entrepreneur and writing my own destiny (no pun intended). I started a web hosting and design company in 1998 while a freshman in high school. It was a life-changing initiative for me. I was 15 and taking on clients like the local country club, Chamber of Commerce, musicians, small business, organizations, and more. I would later learn that tech support and updating websites for people was not so rewarding. I got into developing advertiser-supported community websites of my own — some reached thousands of members.

My second passion is writing! I wandered the campuses of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington for three years, absorbing some of the various offerings that piqued my interests. I soon found that business school wasn’t for me (turns out my anti-passion is calculus), so I pursued a study of professional writing and creative writing. I had always loved writing stories, poetry, and blogging.

I nearly finished at UNCW, less than a year of credits to graduation, but a culmination of events such as failing Computer Science 201 (which I could have taught in my sleep, but did not succeed at taking the final exam in my sleep) and other misfortunes led me to take an extended hiatus to pursue my own online business interests. I have looked at going back to finish, but I’m waiting for the right time as it would only distract from my current business growth.

Tell us about your current job.
I founded DotSauce Magazine in early 2007 as a destination for those interested in domain names. Domaining is the business of buying, selling, and otherwise making money with .COM addresses. I also cater to front-end web developers (not programmers), WordPress enthusiasts, online marketers, bloggers, and online entrepreneurs.

Some of my other active projects are focused on Twitter. I’ve created a Twitter Forum and Twitter app for creating lists of friends.

I also sell domain names occasionally at AQDN.com – Affordable Quality Domain Names. Continue reading →

In the Workplace with Abbe Tykwinski

Name: Abbe Tykwinski
Title: Print Production Coordinator
Website/Blog: abbetyk.blogspot.comWeb Design by Abbe Tykwinski
Location: Chicago, IL

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I graduated in 2006 with a B.A. in Professional Writing from Michigan State University. My track was Editing & Publishing, but I took a lot of the Digital & Technical Writing classes as well. After college I moved to Chicago and got a job re-designing the website of a writing instructor, which I enjoyed. I maintained the website until I got a job at a small publishing company that produced pages for office supply catalogs. I had a temporary job there as a proofreader and when they hired me full-time, I was given the task of re-designing their website as well as managing their image database, reporting on catalog data, and even doing some page makeup. I’ve also done a little freelance web design.

Tell us about your current job.
I currently work at CVS Caremark through a marketing/design staffing agency called Aquent. I started working here in January 2009. I work with two other people to print and assemble proposals and presentations and also a variety of marketing collateral. We run this stuff on the four digital presses we have in house.

I’ve diverged from that job description a little bit by helping design new print request forms and revamping the department’s project tracking database. When I started this job, the database we used captured no useful data other than the names of the projects and who requested them. When the VP of Marketing started to request actual reports, it was obvious we needed to change our system. Our workload had lightened substantially and we had hired a third production coordinator, so I used my downtime to build a new database in Filemaker. I’d never used Filemaker before so it was a real learning experience. I’m happy to say that today we have a functional database that captures all the cost, supply usage, and workload information that we need. Continue reading →

In the Workplace with Justin Parnell

Name: Justin Parnell
Title: Brand Marketing Designer; Freelance Graphic & Web Designer
Location: Denver, CO

Justin Parnell

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Communications at Regis University here in Denver in 2006. My entire life I wanted to be a writer, so my primary focus throughout college was journalism and public relations. My sophomore year I took up an internship with Exclusive Resorts (ER) as a copywriter developing member and employee communication materials. Around the same time, I became editor-in-chief for the university’s newspaper, which kick-started my initial passion for design.

Despite having no technical training and education in graphic design, I jumped at an opportunity to become an in-house designer with Exclusive Resorts after graduating. Working in such a rapid-paced, young, and enthusiastic work environment, I actually doubted my decision for several months. One of my personal peeves is lacking tools and knowledge to do something, especially in a field I feel so passionate about. With the patience and critique of my two former design teammates, literature, blogs, and reverse engineering every ounce of creative I could get my hands on, I was quickly able to gain confidence in becoming a well-established designer.

Tell us about your current job.
I hardly consider what I do a job . . . or work, for that matter. Design really has become my hobby and just an extension of who I really am. I’m very fortunate to be one of two designers at Exclusive Resorts, working alongside a team of writers, managers, and strategists.

As an in-house designer at ER, I’d like to say I make a living from removing excessive spaces after a period. Aside from this mischief, I assist or lead the concept, design, and production of all prospect marketing, member communication, and employee communication. Much of this includes print and online advertising, sales collateral, product collateral, direct mail, e-mail marketing, and monthly newsletters.

When my fingers are not typesetting, coding, color correcting, or drawing in Adobe Creative Suite, they are leading the art direction on architectural photo shoots. The obvious gem of my company is the product itself—stunning luxury homes in some of the world’s greatest destinations. I’ve had the great honor of directing shoots at The Arrabelle in Vail, Colorado, the Fairmont Heritage Place at Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, California, Ho’olei in Wailea, Maui, and The Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences in Kapalua Bay, Maui alongside truly remarkable photographers, Eric Jamison of Studio J and Tony Novak-Clifford. Continue reading →