Research and design assistant

Overview

I’m a data journalist and illustrator who works on a wide range of projects from museum pieces to books and posters. I want to be able to take on more projects but in order to do that I need to take some administrative, research and editing tasks off my plate. This will be a role that is constantly changing depending on which projects are in production. I’m not a micro manager so you will have a lot of discretion to manage your time and your tasks as you see fit. I envision this starting as one day a week but hope that as things grow, your role will too and you will have the opportunity to shape it in a direction that feels right for you (e.g. more research, less design).

Skills

• Patience (the research and technical skills in my work end up in so many dead ends - if you get easily frustrated, you won’t get very far)
• A desire to learn new things (so often I’ll hit some snag, e.g. a font that doesn’t look right and I’ll need to adjust it. That will mean knowing a little about a lot of different programs - most of which I can give you tutorials about myself).
• Experience in data is an enormous plus (i.e. familiarity with excel and some basic formulas. It’s ok if you don’t know this stuff but being scared of numbers won’t work for this role)
• The ability to give and receive feedback (I really mean that about it going both ways - I need someone who can be very honest and direct about draft designs while also being willing to implement changes to their own work without feeling too bruised by the fact that a first draft is rarely perfect (or a second!)).
• Excellent time management and organizational skills (I know this sounds obvious but I take meetings in different time zones and I will need your help scheduling them and showing up promptly)

Role

• Proof reading
• Fact checking
• Reviewing draft illustrations, scripts and videos
• Making edits to images in Photoshop
• Finding research (mostly quantitative) that is relevant to a wide range of social, political and economic questions
• Finding and applying for grants and open design calls
• Scheduling meetings