Portland.BloggersPub

Alan sent in a link for an awesome video about Paul Rand’s innovative Jacket designs. He really thought outside the box, this is something you should totally check out! Unfortunately the video takes forever to download (and at 16 minutes, it was too long to put on YouTube), but it’s definitely worth the wait. Check it out at here.Thanks, Alan!

Inspired Selection are pleased to announce the following
new vacancies under the specialisations you previously
selected. For more detailed information on any vacancy,
including the opportunity to apply for each, please
visit our web site at http://www.inspiredselection.co.uk
and follow links to browse the relevant specialisation.


SALES

International Sales Manager (5629) Salary on application
Our client, a leading trade publisher in West London, is looking
to appoint an International Sales Manager to join their
award-winning team, selling to their group companies in Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and India, as well as customers
across the rest of the world.



This key role involves selling the lists to the group companies,
the Area Sales Managers and major customers in order to achieve
the company sales targets. You will be responsible for overseeing
the International Department in the Director’s absence, providing
sales estimates and forecasts, representing the department at
internal meetings and assisting the Director in the general
management of the department. The role also involves contributing
to the key areas of sales management, sales administration and
sales support.



Overseas travel is required to support the company’s sales
efforts, including attendance at the Frankfurt Bookfair.



Candidates should be committed and enthusiastic and have previous
sales experience, ideally in a publishing environment, in addition
to an interest in international, and a clear understanding of the
wider publishing process. First rate interpersonal and
organisational skills are required, as well as the ability to
multi-task. You should be confident, motivated and an excellent
team-player.



Closing date: 01/02/08


London and Southeast

Kate McFadden - kate@inspiredselection.co.uk

If this vacancy is not of interest to you, please forward it to
anyone you feel may be interested.


MARKETING/PUBLICITY

Direct Marketing Executive (5627) Salary on application
A leading, international and academic publisher, based in
Oxfordshire, has a vacancy for

an experienced marketing professional to manage their catalogue
and leaflet production across a variety of subject areas within
Humanities and Built Environment. This is a key role and will
involve liaison with marketing, editorial, design and print to
ensure catalogues are produced to the highest specification, on
time and to budget. Database management, scheduling and
proofreading will be integral to the role. As this is a
process-driven position applicants will need exceptional
organisational and time management skills, a good eye for detail
and excellent communication and interpersonal skills. A working
knowledge of Quark and the design and print process will be
advantageous. Closing date: ASAP


Oxfordshire and Midlands

Sue Trafford - sue@inspiredselection.co.uk

If this vacancy is not of interest to you, please forward it to
anyone you feel may be interested.


EDITORIAL

Project Manager (Journals) (5628) Salary: On application
Our client is one of the most prestigious academic publishers in
the UK and is based in modern, stylish offices in central London.
They are seeking to appoint a Project Manager within their well
regarded journals division to manage the roll-out of the print
journal portfolio to Manuscript Central. This is a permanent, full
time appointment.

In this highly communicative and strategic role you will review,
further advance and develop a general roll-out plan of Manuscript
Central to a large portfolio of journals. You will be supported by
an Assistant and will be the in-house champion of Manuscript
Central, providing support and training to staff and journal
editors. This role provides the opportunity to really make an
impact on the organisation, and the right candidate could even
look at taking a global view in rolling out the system worldwide.
The position may also involve travel to the USA.

The successful applicant will have a background in STM or academic
journals and ideally will have experience in migrating journals to
Manuscript Central, Editorial Manager or a similar online journal
management system. You will have excellent communication and
interpersonal skills and will be able to form strong professional
relationships across all levels of the organisation. You will be
highly computer literate and will be able to demonstrate strong
project management skills.

For a full description of the role, please don’t hesitate to get
in touch.

Contact: Amelia Cranfield

E: amelia@inspiredselection.co.uk

T: 0207 440 1494

Closing Date: Friday 8th February 2008
London and Southeast

Amelia Cranfield - amelia@inspiredselection.co.uk

If this vacancy is not of interest to you, please forward it to
anyone you feel may be interested.

Sub Editor (Medical Journals) (5558a) Salary: £21,000 - £23,000
This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to take their
desk editorial and DTP skills to the next level. A company that
specialises in medical and healthcare journals is looking for a
Sub-Editor. The company is located in central London and is
expanding, so there is a lot of opportunity for the right
candidate.

This is a hands-on role that will involve everything from
commissioning articles and editorials through to proof-reading the
manuscripts, doing onscreen sub-editing, page layout and managing
the peer-review process. You will help with the publication of
four journals and will work with a small, friendly team. There
will be an additional creative element to the role with the
opportunity to write news pieces, article summaries and other
short pieces.

The successful candidate will hold a degree (or equivalent) in
science, preferably biological, medical or life sciences, and will
be ambitious with a can-do approach. You will ideally have
previous editorial experience with scientific or medical content
as well as a working knowledge of Quark Xpress and/or Adobe
InDesign, but more important is a confidence in your ability to
meet firm deadlines and a demonstrable passion for healthcare
issues.

For a full description of the role, please don’t hesitate to get
in touch. Send your current CV as well as details on your current
salary to Amelia Cranfield.

Contact: Amelia Cranfield

E: amelia@inspiredselection.co.uk

T: 0207 440 1494

Closing Date: Friday 8th February 2008 but CVs ASAP please
London and Southeast

Amelia Cranfield - amelia@inspiredselection.co.uk

I thought I’d do my bit for the Advanced Editing class by posting this notice about their contest. Submit!

WRITE AFTER DARK

Announcing the Fourth Annual Ooligan Editors’ Choice Short Story Contest

What: Submit previously unpublished short stories of 4,000 words or less.

Theme: After Dark

Who Can Submit: The Portland State community, past and present. (One entry per person.)

How: Send your After Dark story as a Word document (double-spaced, 12 pt. font) in an e-mail attachment to: lemur50@hotmail.com. Please include your name and the title of your story in the body of your e-mail.

Deadline: After Dark on or before Friday, February 1, 2008.

Entries will be anonymously judged by Ooligan Press Editors who will select and professionally edit the four best entries. The winning stories will receive the Ooligan Editors’ Choice Award and will be published in an electronic journal on Ooligan’s website.

Mars is just fantastic. Its landscapes are so familiar and yet so alien and forbidding. Anyway, this short NASA article on martian winds caught my eye. For the upcoming February Astrobiology, I edited a paper about bacteria that grow on Earth deserts. As they grow, they form a crust on the sand which prevents fine particles from blowing around in the wind. Could these bacteria be useful… when we terraform Mars? Seriously! Someone has to start thinking about these things.

If we do colonize Mars, we will certainly need to do something to keep martian dust under control. Imagine: martian dust devils rise up to 9 kilometers above the planet’s surface. No, I’d rather not go out in that weather.

But as long as we are just observers on Earth, we can learn much about the martian atmosphere and surface from studying the patterns of dust particles deposited by the planet’s winds. This brings me back to the NASA article. I hope you enjoy it. You might also visit the University of Arizona HiRise website.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_006477_1745

“Orbiting Camera Details Dramatic Wind Action on Mars” (article mentioned above)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro-20080123.html

Camera lenses can be very expensive, but I’ve always subscribed to the MacGuiver DIY approach in life. Here’s a video on how to use cheap binoculars to make your own ghetto-fabulous macro lens for your camera:



DIY Macro Lens Made From Binoculars - video powered by Metacafe

“The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman.” (True or False?)

I haven’t read many of George Orwell’s essays and articles, but I discovered and enjoyed “Bookshop Memories.” I find him articulate, honest, bitter, funny: “books give off more and nastier dust than any other class of objects yet invented.”

In many ways his essay strips away the glamorous image of bookshops and booksellers. Yet in its blunt way it also glorifies those sacred, small, independent bookstores that are altogether too scarce these days.

Honestly, this is something straight out of Intro to Book Publishing! I keep looking over my shoulder for Andre Schiffrin.

For more Orwell works, the main site is “George Orwell.” Or you can go directly to the “Library.”

Don’t forget tonight’s book launch for Tim Harnett’s debut novel “Trompe L’oeil.” Rain or snow, it will be held at the 3 Friends Coffee House at 201 SE 12th Ave, Portland. Tonight will feature a reading from a chapter of the book, a deleted scene, and a book signing. It ought to be a lot of fun, so come on out!

Any Beatles fans out there might appreciate this. I decided to set up a ColourLovers palette based on Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. I’d intended to have cyan represent Paul, green represent John, yellow represent Ringo, and orange represent George as I saw in an old cartoon image of the band. In ColourLovers if no one in their system has used a specific color before, you are allowed to name it, like you discovered it. My colors for John, George, and Paul were all new so I was able to name them, but unfortunately that meant–as always–Ringo was left out. So, I changed the color palette a tad to give Ringo a light-orange just so he wasn’t left out…

The following was forwarded to me via Tim:

Portland Zine Symposium 2008 looking for poster designs!
Technology has aided the zine community in ways we could never
imagine, but have we also traded convenience for a lack of community?
Myspace, Livejournal, Paypal, and fancy layout programs have replaced
handwritten letters, ad trades and lasting friendships. lets bring our
community back to paper! reclaim the glue stick, start spending more
time at the copy shop and less on computers. Back to diy! Back to
community! Back to the roots!

PZS is looking for art submissions for the 2008 poster. This year’s theme is

“Back to diy.
Back to community.
Back to the roots.”


The guidelines are simple – We are looking for a 11″ wide x 17″ tall
poster that will also be used in other formats (the web, post cards,
buttons, stickers, etc), so your design needs to be visible and
striking at multiple sizes and resolutions (or have smaller, breakaway
pieces). The design will eventually be silk screened / screen printed
onto t-shirts, so limit your colors to black, white and one other
color. We encourage artists to use any medium or style. If a design is
especially appealing, our decision committee is open to enlisting a
computer graphics whiz to help us resize the image, but we would prefer
the artist to assist us in the process of transferring the image to
other mediums.

Your design should include:

- the theme
- the dates (TBA)
- the place (Portland State University Smith Memorial Ballroom)
- the website (www.pdxzines.com)
- “8th Annual Portland Zine Symposium”
- “A conference and zine social exploring facets of underground publishing and DIY culture.”

Submission deadline is Febuary 15th. Submissions can be emailed to pdxzines@gmail.com, mailed to PO Box 5901 Portland, OR 97228-5901 or dropped off at the IPRC.

Here’s a new site I found via Appclinic. A free website that lets you take raster (or bitmapped) images and change them into editable vector files (i.e. go from Photoshop to Illustrator). The site is called VectorMagic and you can find it at http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/. Granted both Illustrator and Inkscape (to be reviewed later) have tracing features that accomplish the same sorts of things, but VectorMagic is nice since it is really easy to use and is online. Experimenting with the RocketBoom logo, I actually found VectorMagic to work better than Illustrator’s trace feature.