Creative director among those laid off at WSJ

Tomaso Capuano, who was named creative director for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones & Co. in 2008, was among those laid off from the business newspaper at the end of last month.

Capuano was responsible for design across the Journal and Dow Jones. He was previously the creative director for the recently launched WSJ., The Journal’s lifestyle glossy magazine. For the past three years, he worked primarily on designing new products.

“I was creative director during the period when we modernized and redefined The Journal visually, won several design and photography awards in the process and launched numerous new sections,” said Capuano in an email to Talking Biz News on Tuesday.

Capuano said he will now be focusing primarily on consultancy and freelance work. He can be reached at tomaso@semitonal.com.

Before he joined Dow Jones, Capuano was the art director of new projects at The Times of London, a position he held since 2002. He played a key role in several launches and re-designs at The Times, most notably the creation of the compact Times newspaper in 2004, the re-launch of the award winning Times Online in 2007 and the launch of The Times Select and LUXX electronic magazines.

Prior to that, Capuano was the art director of the FT’s Creative Business supplement in 2000, which followed a two-year period as a professional musician.

In 1995 he took over the The Financial Times’ How To Spend It Magazine as art director, completely re-designing the publication and earning a number of awards in the process.

Other layoffs include senior staffers such as Rick Stine, senior editor of innovation, and John Seeley, who had founded the paper’s Greater New York section.