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Howard Beach station

4339394309 fe0041a5be b Howard Beach station photography art

i’m on fire

My friends Mike and Mike of The Michaels used some footage I shot for a little cover they did of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire.” Great track and Mike G. did a nice job putting it all together.

Also, definitely go over and listen to their Jon Brion cover project.

the experience of applying for a job at a design studio should not be painful

UPDATED: I’m not trying to pick on them specifically. Most of the forms I found were just as bad.

As you probably know, I’ve been applying for a lot of jobs recently. It seems like the studios that emphasize user experience design in their client work, and as a requirement for their applicants, have some of the worst experiences for applying.

Lots of companies just provide a mailto:, which is generally a bad way to offer a contact option online. It’s not great, but at least it’s not absolutely insanely frustrating like the form featured on HUGE’s website. (At this point, I recommend you go over to their site and try it out for yourself.) I promise this isn’t me being bitter because they didn’t hire me. But since they’ve made it clear that they aren’t going to give me a job, at least I can give them a little free advice, no benefits or vacation time due.

1. When you click ‘Apply’ in the job description page, it pops up a modal box. Now, I love modal boxes because I equally dislike changing pages. However, a modal box with a scroll bar is a joke. Take me to a page with an application form.

2. The close button is in the lower right. Below the scroll bar. WTF? This is nonstandard for every — single — operating system. Ever.

3. The ‘Insert a resume’ button at the top of the form opens another modal box (yes, a modal box inside a scrolling modal box) whose design is Windows95 worthy. It then proceeds to insert the text of your document into the text fields lower in the form, thus entirely breaking the formatting. At best, it looks like shit. At worst, it’s unreadable. You’d think, from casual experience using websites and standard design patterns, that it would upload the .pdf. No. Wrong. Also, if you’re applying for a design position you’d think they’d like to see how you set a page that is nothing but type. If you’re not applying for a design position, it would be nice to know that the applicant can create a professional document.

There are also similar links above the fields themselves. Huh?

4. The technology used to parse the .pdf into the form fields sucks. As in, it thought that the filename was my last name. Yes, I’m Jacob Resume_v3.2.

I don’t expect it to work perfectly, but if it’s that bad just don’t use it.

5. This is minor in comparison, but you denote mandatory fields with an asterisk, but insist on still putting a horizontal rule and the text ‘Optional information’ for the fields that follow them.

6. The final ‘eff you’ in the experience is the automated response you get. Gee, thanks. I took the time to fight with your stupid form so that I could ask for a job, yet you couldn’t take the time to acknowledge that? Seems like a fair trade. I know you get a lot of applications, so just have the form confirm that it received the application and spare me the automated response. Or at least rewrite the copy so that I could possibly be tricked into thinking it was written by a human being.

In light of this horrid design, who are you to judge my work? That said, I’m still looking for a job so if you need someone to redesign it, please use my contact form (I promise, it won’t make you cry out of frustration).

Fig. 1f

Click to go full-size or download from Flickr.

4307708222 f7958169f8 o Fig. 1f recent work

real ‘folio!

Just launched the real portfolio. Cargo is now just for Archived work.
jhportfolio 03 640x524 real folio! recent work
jhportfolio 01 640x524 real folio! recent work
jhportfolio 02 640x524 real folio! recent work

los angeles stopover

We had quite the adventure running around Los Angeles in the pouring rain yesterday.

The trip to the west coast comes a bit earlier than I anticipated, as I only left for New York last week. The week of scouting jobs and apartments has resulted in temporary solutions for both, so I count that as a success. As I’m waiting to move into my place in Brooklyn, I decided it would be a good idea to grab a few things from San Diego and finish some projects I’ve had on my mind. I dropped half my stuff off at the new place and jumped on a plane to LAX the next morning. It ended up being the most turbulent flight I’ve been on; a few times we changed altitude quickly enough to put my plastic window shade down. People screamed. We landed. I met up with longtime friend and man behind The Ampal Creative and we ate Mexican food like you can only get in Southern California. We drank. It rained.

Wednesday was about more rain. And art. With the rare-for-Southern-California storm, a close run-in with a bus, an epic pastrami sandwich from Langer’s, some great art, good people, and crossing paths with an old friend, it was an LA trip I’ll remember for a long time.

Huge thanks to Seth, Elisa, and Lauren at Carmichael Gallery for letting us take an early look at the new show. Also ran into Mr. Sebastian Buck of Unurth fame there. Between really solid work from Mark Jenkins and Aakash Nihalani and a lot of good press, I’m happily convinced it’s going to be a great show for them. It opens Thursday, January 21 and is the last show before they move into a new space in Culver City. They’re doing everything right, so let’s wish them luck in the new location.

la rain 1 los angeles stopover art
la rain 2 los angeles stopover art
la rain 6 los angeles stopover art
la rain 3 los angeles stopover art
la rain 4 los angeles stopover art
la rain 5 los angeles stopover art
an mj carmichael 8 los angeles stopover art
an mj carmichael 7 los angeles stopover art
an mj carmichael 6 los angeles stopover art
an mj carmichael 4 los angeles stopover art
an mj carmichael 3 los angeles stopover art
an mj carmichael 1 los angeles stopover art
an mj carmichael 2 los angeles stopover art
an mj carmichael 5 los angeles stopover art

Raval, Barcelona.

2009.
p1010535 Raval, Barcelona. photography art

fig. 1e

click to go full-size, or download from Flickr.

4255742610 f3e273b531 o fig. 1e recent work

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