Surdam takes on new art director role at the NY Times
The following was sent out from The New York Times’ Mike Schmidt and Andrew Kueneman:
James Surdam
We’re delighted to announce James Surdam as the new art director for the Social Visuals team. James brings us a great amount of visual and social expertise, and he’ll help us deliver stronger coverage off-platform by working with reporters, editors, producers and designers to craft visual stories for social media channels. He’ll help us refine our use of design, animation, typography, video, photography, illustration and audio on social platforms while also pushing us to innovate with new designs, workflows and storytelling formats that extend our reach and expand our audience off-platform.
Recently, James has been working with our Visual Investigations team, contributing excellent design and motion graphics that showcase visual evidence and investigative results as part of stories on protests in Peru and Russia’s setbacks. Prior to that, James worked with Research and Development and the Social team, creating augmented reality experiences and animated explainers.
Before The Times, James was a motion graphics editor at NBC News, where he worked to create the visual system for Stay Tuned, a successful daily news show targeting younger viewers on Snapchat, and he created the visual identity for NBC News Now, the network’s 24/7 streaming news service.