Reading List, Sept. 19

A weekly roundup of job-hunting tips, career advice and interesting articles relevant to the magazine industry and being an editor.


• "10 Good Things To Do While Between Jobs" by Blessy Vaidian on JobMob. If you're looking for work, do more than just send out resumés and mope around the house: network, volunteer or learn something new.

• "5 Tips for Hiring Startup Interns" by Kwame Kuadey on the Young Entrepreneur Council. Although aimed at start-up companies, this piece offers a basic guide suitable for any company that hires interns. Tips 4 and 5 are particularly important: set expectations upfront, and consider interns as potential candidates for future staff positions.

• Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, by Keith Houston. I highly recommend this fascinating blog, which tells the surprisingly intriguing stories of punctuation marks, their use and their histories. Trust me, it's not as dry as it sounds.

A Wordle (word cloud) of the most commonly used words on Dream Job TK.

• Wordle. If you need an inexpensive (read free) illustration for an article, try out this cool toy created by Jonathan Feinberg (yes, the rights allow for commercial usage). Enter the article text and this tool will create a word cloud that you can customize by colour, font and layout. Also a handy tool for seeing if any words have been overused in a story.

• The Fantastic Man editorial offices on Where They Create by Paul Barbera. Photographs of the magazine's editorial offices in Amsterdam. Also on the site: the offices of interior design magazine Frame in Amsterdam, Monster Children magazine in Sydney, and Sneaker Freaker magazine in Melbourne. (via magCulture)

office spaces

Most offices are stuck in cubicleland, with uninspiring spaces that lack character and don't represent the kind of work that happens there. They're not very nice places to work. And although I question the practicality of some of the elements in these spaces featured on the Business Insider, I would much rather go to work in one of these offices than in a dull corporate space.

Gawker's steampunk-style offices

The offices of Blue State Digital

ht @lavrusik via @niemanlab

make your cubicle more bearable

For those of us stuck in cubicleland, here's a suggestion from the Style North blog on how to improve those horrible fluorescent lights above our desks: Using a highlighter, colour the acrylic cover pink to create a rosy glow. If you're not one for altering company property, I think you could also achieve the same effect by tacking up a pink gel or tissue paper over the cover.

in defence of small talk

Do you ever find yourself rolling your eyes at the necessity of inane chitchat? Does anyone really care what their co-workers did on the weekend? Does anyone really want to discuss the negative impact cold weather is having on your day with that PR rep? Ok, it's not all bad, and there's certainly a good reason for making small talk. An article on the Guardian website reminds us that without it, work mightn't be as pleasant.

Small talk with colleagues might make you feel like the office-equivalent of a cow, just blankly chewing on the same old cud over and over, but what, I ask, would you rather do? Just launch straight in with the purpose of your call with no initial niceties whatsoever? Face it, there are people who do that already, and they're the ones you think are really weird.

These little observations we make to each other on the phone, on email, or even in person, may be petty and inane, but in their own shy way they are rather lovely. You're essentially saying to whoever it may be that, despite the fact you don't know each other and never will, you are willing to spend a few moments talking pointlessly at one another to indicate that you regard each other as more than just another obstacle to be surmounted in your separate scrabbles for professional advancement.

cubicle-land

Ok, this isn't specifically magazine-related, and it won't do much to help your career, but I find it amusing. Wired has posted the results of its search for the saddest cubicle ever.