FASHION magazine’s Associate Designer, Nicole Schaeffer, on her cool career, the digital fashion industry, and the ultimate intimidator.
No
one handwrites anymore. Long gone are the days of penmanship and the swift
looping together of letters with the stroke of a feather—ahem—okay, pen. In the
January 2016 issue of Canadian Business
magazine, handwriting expert Carole Tovels explains, “by using the computer
constantly you’re not using your handwriting skills anymore…you’re losing your
flexibility and legibility, and your ease of writing”. Screens, keyboards, and
touchpads now dominate and their functions are integral to the lives of
billions of people around the globe to communicate and carry out day-to-day
activities. We are waking up with our smartphones, tablets, and laptops, going
to sleep with them, taking them into the shower with us, and panicking at the
nightmarish thought of going a day without them.
Navigating
the first stages of a career can be just as frightening as separation from the
devices that have virtually become an extension of the human body. In our
fast-paced, hyper-connected world, we feel lost without the instant
gratification of obscenely fast information at our fingertips, and the outcome of
the future is no exception. For young people entering the workforce there is no
guarantee of what tomorrow will bring, and neither Siri nor Cortana can provide
any certainty.
Thankfully
we are not alone. And sometimes, we are in the exceptional company of those who
inspire us to make our own impact on the industry we are tiptoeing or blazing
into. This issue, we caught up with Nicole Schaeffer, a cool-as-they-come
Torontonian and FASHION magazine’s
Associate Designer. A resume lit up by a Bachelor of Design from Ryerson
University, internships at FLARE
magazine, The Society, and Narrative PR, the latter two of which she also
worked at, on top of her current design role at Canada’s number one fashion and
beauty magazine, tells us that she not only makes paper look good, but looks
really good on paper. With her equal love of both writing and designing, we’re
willing to bet she has pretty fancy handwriting too.
Lucky
for us, we’ve exchanged notes of our own kind with Schaeffer, and been given a
sneak peak into the behind-the-scenes of her highly coveted position. A typical
day starts with a digital team meeting where current news and fresh ideas for
web posts are shared. “If we are in production for the magazine (2.5 weeks a
month) my focus is on designing pages; taking editors copy and laying it out on
the page, along with selecting art that will make it the most compelling. When
we’re not in production, we’re shooting products that will be featured in the
next issue with our in-house photographer, as well as banking images and GIFs
for Instagram,” she says.
In
line with the most striking of handwritten words, she calls the career path
that led her to where she is “anything but linear”. The now savvy FASHION magazine associate describes
learning how the magazine was put together in the first few weeks on the job as
“foreign territory”, due to a lack of professional design experience. Though
she shares that with a poised optimism, a belief in seizing opportunities, and
a proven initiative to seek out new ones, all of her positions have landed her
in her current job with a well-rounded skill set.
Schaeffer’s
experience represents the reality of entering the Canadian job market in which,
“Employers do not expect students and new grads to have a lot of work
experience”, though they are, “drawn to applicants who have some real-world
experience”, as reported by Virginia Galt in The Globe and Mail (November 27, 2015). Galt highlights the importance of leveraging
all part-time work, summer jobs, volunteer work, and personal connections for
those making the transition from colleges and universities into the competitive
workforce. As well, The Globe writers
Don Drummond, Ross Finnie, and Harvey Weingarten report individuals joining the
workforce now “will likely have many jobs and several careers before they
retire,” raising the importance of general competencies that “provide the
fundamental and foundational skills that are transferable across jobs” (October
20, 2015).
Diversification
of your skills is especially critical for graduating students as industries
evolve to meet the needs of consumers. In the fashion industry, there’s been a
significant shift in power in recent years, largely attributed to the rise of
celebrity culture, fashion bloggers, fast-fashion retailers, and smartphones,
as examined by Karen Von Hahn in “R.I.P. Tide”, in the March 2016 issue of FASHION magazine.
Our
it-girl comments, “Everyone is desperately trying to determine which way the
tide is going to go. If trends are dead, and fashion weeks are dead, then is
the consumer, and not content, king? I don’t think anyone knows right now, but
it is my belief that there will always be a place for a long-lead, thoroughly
researched articles and beautifully laid-out pages. We live in such a digital
age, the premium placed on something tangible like print has made it rarer than
ever—that has to count for something, doesn’t it?” In adaptation to the rapidly
changing activities of the industry and consumer engagement with print and
digital media, Schaeffer describes that she and her team are looking to provide
content for whoever their readers are, be that in print, online, or on social.
For
young aspiring fashion students, the FASHION
magazine designer advises, “The road is long, and not as glamorous as it seems.
Salaries are not lucrative. You will have multiple internships. You will need
to take criticism and work independently without direction. Your successes will
not always be acknowledged. Everyone in this industry is not here for the
accolades, but because they love it—they eat, breathe, and sleep fashion.”
Searching
for a job and stepping out from the comforts of classrooms into the “real
world”, no matter the industry, can feel intimidating, but we all start
somewhere. Schaeffer’s ultimate intimidator? A blank page. “Where to start?
Nothing makes me procrastinate more than a blank page,” she says. “However, if
you can force yourself to put something on the page, regardless of whether it
works or not, you at least have a foothold you can build on.” You cannot
forecast, control, or Google the future, and you’ll never know if you never
try, so put your pen to paper and, “Just keep going and revise later. Revising
is always easier than building”.
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