[B-B]

I often come across companies advertising for Mac operators.

Generally from what I gather the money is usually quite impressive ranging between £12-£16 per hour, with flexi-hours, etc.

My reason for the posting is, I was wondering whether anybody has had experience in this field, working as a Mac operator?

Obviously duties, and task differ from company to company and specific area of design, but I am unfamiliar of the kind of duties Mac operators receive, it’s my understanding Mac operators simply finish artwork renderings, and things of this nature.

Can anyone shed some-light on this?

Cheers!

[mike_m]

most likely it's working in Quark doing layouts for printwork..

[chaka42]

yup, although in the states that job doesn't pay well ...

[B-B]

Originally Posted by mike_mitry

most likely it's working in Quark doing layouts for printwork..

arghhh no not Quark lol.

[pedge]

Originally Posted by B-B

I often come across companies advertising for Mac operators.

Obviously duties, and task differ from company to company and specific area of design, but I am unfamiliar of the kind of duties Mac operators receive, it’s my understanding Mac operators simply finish artwork renderings, and things of this nature.

Hi B-B,

Up until recently I worked as a Mac Operator (or Mac Artworker) - depending on how the company is structured, you might take a designers concepts (usually pencil sketches but sometimes illustrator files with about 500 spot colours in them!) and turn them into print-ready artwork. Or, you may come up with the design yourself and take it straight through to artwork.

Also, I touched for a lot of the text heavy documents which meant keying them in (or OCR'ing them) and flowing it into a master page layout in Quark (urgh).

Powerpoint presentations, screensavers, websites, looking after the network and stuff like that made up the rest of the time - Mac Operator is a pretty ambiguous description so you would need to check how the company percieves a Mac Operators duties as it may also include making the tea and giving the bosses jag its weekly valet...

Hope this helps!

Pedge