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Woot.com, the world’s first, best, and handsomest deal-a-day web site, drops mad bargainz every night at midnight, along with near-lethal doses of irreverence and snot. It’s like the shopping channel in slow motion, minus the idiot hosts and the marketing hyperbole.

Against all reason, we’re hoping to cram one more person into our St. Louis-based creative & development office. Right now, a lot of Americans are talking about whether experience matters. For this job, it’s the ONLY thing that matters. We’re not looking for a diploma, we’re looking for a designer. We’re looking for somebody who can show us that they’ve done the work and can do it again. Whether you did it for pay, for a grade, or just for fun is of no interest to us. So don’t bother lying on your resume about your degrees. Your portfolio will tell us all we need to know. And XHTML never lies.

In this job, you’ll learn: that great web pages aren’t born. They’re made. Then tweaked, modified, revised, and finally re-made all over again from scratch.

Intangible benefits: a commute that isn’t affected by the I-64 shutdown, unless you live in West County.

Potential hazards: sprained wrists from the Creative Department’s daily arm-wrestling bouts. If Woot were a superhero team, you’d be: Bezier Lass or Lad, trusty sidekick to the Creative Director.

Degrees of separation from CEO: two degrees and about 800 miles.

Worst part of the job: the inside jokes. Four of us went to high school together.

It’ll go better if: you love the much-misunderstood St. Louis-style pizza and hate the Chicago Cubs. You are one of us, aren’t you?

Just kidding about: that last part. The job is open to applicants of all races, faiths, nationalities, genders, sexual orientations, team affinities, and pizza preferences. No jerks, though.

Make sure you bring: the occasional twelve-pack of Coke Zero. That fridge doesn’t stock itself, you know.

Responsibilities:

• Working with Creative Director to create and modify web and print graphics, in a variety of platforms, contexts, and formats, and consistent with the established Woot brand.
• Using CSS and XHTML to create web pages.
• Analyzing the pros and cons of potential changes, especially with regard to aesthetics and usability.
• Dealing with crazy bosses who are constantly flinging new tasks at you before you’re finished with the last ones.
• Protecting the secret of the Lost Woot Gold of Las Bromas Canyon, with your life if necessary.

Qualifications:

• Like we said, we don’t much care about your formal schooling or lack thereof, but you MUST show an online portfolio displaying: o CSS in an organized format with well-thought-out and consistent naming conventions; o XHTML that is semantic, accessible, and structural rather than display-centric, without using tables (except for tabular data) or deprecated tags, and consistent throughout multiple pages and sites; o Aesthetically pleasing and intuitively usable layout and design; and o Nothing that hurts our eyes, gets on our nerves, or makes us wonder what you were thinking.
• Demonstrated experience in Photoshop design, including creating functional web page mockups, ability to work within an existing look-and-feel, and the ability to expand to new projects.
• Photo retouching experience, especially as relates to product photographs.
• Secondary skills include designing with vector graphics as in Illustrator, and familiarity with aspects of printing such as Pantone colors and resolution/dpi.
• Familiarity with the Visual Studio environment, .NET code, SourceSafe, basic JavaScript, and digital camera photography a plus.
• Ability to read a clock, dress and bathe yourself, and express your thoughts and ideas without personal insults or physical violence.

Local candidates only please (St. Louis, Missouri)