The Times Visit

This was my pass from visiting the Times, I love how they spelt both of my names wrong, haha!

So a few weeks ago, Jon Hill, the art director from the times newspaper came into college and gave a short lecture on the type of work he does. His job sounds very tiring but interesting!
He told us about the types of jobs he had before working for the times, after graduating, he did some unpaid work in a studio, then went on to work for another studio, then for years endedup being self employed before getting a great opportunity to work for the times!
This was quite comforting knowing that he had a few creative jobs and even worked on his own before he got a stable job with a huge company!
He spoke about all the different teams and how many people were in each team (a hell of alot of people working on one thing!) it was quite overwelhming. He even mentioned how sometimes people would be working up untill 10 at night, sometimes even later depending if they had to change the paper for a new story!
Seems like a mad job to me!
Me, Chloe and Philippa spoke to Jon afterwards and asked if he would be able to take a quick look at our portfolios while we were in London and he asked us if we'd like to join Lucy and the 2nd yr graphics on a tour of the Times, while we were all in London, so we happily went to this.

The building was huge and quite scary, lots of people coming in and out with there little ID cards.

So we went for a quick walk around the 2 floors of the Times, Jon explained who did what and what area they were working with. There were so many desks, people and computers! So many people working away it was crazy. He even showed us where the in house illustrator worked, they had the tiniest little office but it was away from all of the journalist etc who were all cramped into one area! Unfortunatly the in house illustrator wasn't in at that time so we couldn't have a chat with him.

At the end of the tour Jon had to rush off as he had to be abck at his desk to crack on with some work before he got into trouble and because he was so busy we didn't want to bug him about a portfolio visit, we didn't want be rude so we thought it would be best to possily just sent him a PDF or a link to our websites when we got home, that way he could take a look when he had to time to.

Even though it was a little dissapointing not to get a portfolio visit, it was a nice experience to get to take a look around the work place of a huge newspaper! It was very interesting but overwelhming, I don't think I would like to work in this kind of job, but you don't know what it's like untill you try it!