First big assignment: Official photographer at Man and His World, the yearly re-celebration of Expo 67. Then, as a freelancer, my pictures appeared coast-to-coast in Weekend magazine and locally in the Montreal Gazette. Corporate clients included Alcan, Domtar and Robin Hood Multifoods. Media contacts also brought work as a writer – notably articles in the Montreal Star and Weekend Scene.
A pioneering all-news network, CKO Radio, hired me as a broadcaster. Later there were news-writing stints at Radio Canada International, but the bulk of my experience came at the copy desk of Globe International where I wrote thousands of stories (even an astrology column). When Globe moved to Florida, advertising agencies such as BCP and Leo Burnett brought me on board. News Extra – a startup international tabloid – eventually made me their associate editor. I gained pre-press and typesetting skills while wrangling headlines, courtesy of its desktop publishing system.
I changed industries when offered a job at CentreTypo and spent several years as a technical illustrator preparing financial graphs for annual reports (Air Canada, Power Corporation, BCE, the Royal Bank…). To complement my new typographic knowledge, I learned database programming so I could create text management software. My abilities also led to work as a computer instructor at New Horizons and Expert Formation.
The open landscape of today’s media technology challenges communicators, but is familiar territory to me. For example, everything from photojournalism to marketing and meeting management, for example, helped contribute to the Canadian Forces program for Operational Stress Injury. And design as well as coding skills went into creating my online publishing system (www.fastview.ca). I am available as a consultant, copywriter and editorial designer for both advanced & transitional media projects, including work that involves graphic production and web coding.
Photographs on the magazine pages shown in the “Work Samples” section belong to the respective rights-holders.
All other photographs, plus text, artwork and designs on montrealmac.com are by James L. Mac Donald and
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.