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To colleagues explore what it means to be a multimedia designer and how to succees at this nebulos job.
It was one of those dark and stormy nights of the soul when we question our career choices and regret that we didn't go into something more lucrative like architecture or medicine, or something noncorporate, like herbology or costume design.
Instead, we have accumulated more than 30 years of experience working with computer-based and print-based products. We have designed user interfaces, written scripts, managed objects, developed software manuals, and taught classes. We have also worked on teams to produce multimedia marketing presentations, electronic brochures, consumer titles, and software training. Yet, we often have a hard time describing what it is that we do. What is it that we do again? Over the years our jobs have changed, and our skills have grown and strengthened. Today, they call us multimedia designers. Still, we have pondered what to put in the blank next to Title on an IRS form. We have struggled to come up with a business card that doesn't require a 10-minute explanation. We've obsessed over a 25words-or-less job description for our alumni magazines. And we've tried to explain at industry meetings that we're not graphic artists or programmers.
Because of our nebulous job function, we are serious about defining our titles. Webster's doesn't define multimedia designer yet. But if it did it might be something like this: (A) A person that communicates through words, images, and sound, interweaving them to tell a story of some kind in an interactive way. (B) A professional communicator that uses written and spoken words, graphics, still and moving photography, and musical and nonmusical sounds to deliver a specific message to a specific audience for a specific reason.
(C) The member of a multimedia project team that determines the look and feel of a product, identifies the appropriate types of...