My background is mostly in print media and my previous job was a designer in the Office of Publications. I moved over to Web Communications at the end of last year and so far it’s been a huge transition. (I had to move from a Mac to a PC. ICK!) I learned very quickly that design for the Web is completely different than design for print and that it takes a lot of effort to “just throw it up on the Web.”
In the office, my official title is I-Net Administrator, but my primary role is a Web designer. I’m the one who takes Niki’s information architecture and organizes it on screen so it’s easy to use, fits with the university’s look, and sticks to our MU Web Policies and Guidelines. Of course, I always make it pretty too.
After I get my design mocked-up in Photoshop, I build it in XHTML and CSS. Luckily, I had a little bit of a background in CSS before coming to Web Communications, so I didn’t have any old habits with building sites in tables to get over. I was able to jump right into CSS and now I feel like I have a really good handle on the technology.
My other big duty in the office is content management system (CMS) monkey. To be more specific, I’m the no. 2 monkey, right under Jason. I take my pretty design and spend many, many hours chopping it up into blocks and regions and other CMS thingys so I can go back and write some XSLT to manipulate it all. I’ve never done a lick of programming before the CMS came along, so this part is the toughest for me. It’s common to hear curses of frustration spouting out of my office. Don’t worry, I’m just CMS’n and I’ll be over it as soon as I get my Starbucks.
I also handle lots of little jobs in the office: I create graphics for our sites, I take some pictures, I direct photographers, I illustrate, I build Power Points, I maintain existing sites and other things as needed. In the future I hope to have the chance to expand my skill set into multimedia as we get more demand for that kind of thing.
