In the first week of my internship I was giving the task to work on a new logo for one of there old clients. They had created a logo for the client whose company name is Signature Events and paper. Signature Events and paper is a boutique event and stationery design business were they specialize in theme events and invitations. They are going to launch a new event that is about cocktail drinks and would like for us to alter the previous logo by adding a cocktail glass and changing the word events and paper to cocktails. I did not have to make the logo from scratch because she wanted to keep the previous one but I did have to come up with different ideas of how to incorporate the glass and the word cocktails. I worked on the program adobe illustrator to create the glass and I learned a few tricks on how to make an object appear in the front and back at the same time without having to cut it. I came up with several ideas on how the logo should look like and quickly learned that it’s great to have a lot of ideas but not always necessary to show it all to the client. I was told that you should not give a client to many options in this case because they can get confused there for this creates more work for you. She explained to me that once the client knows what they want and ask for specific things you should limit the amount of ideas that you show them. She also said that the price that you charge to make a logo is going to determine the amount of work that you are going to do and the amount of time that you should spend on the logo. After narrowing down the logo ideas we sent the clients five different versions and waited for a response. All the versions were done in black and white until she approves one of them.
Journal Entry #4 first week of internship 2/26/2014
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– March 10, 2014
Journal Entry #3 First day of Internship
I am posting my Journal entry a little late but here it is:
My first day at Glyph Creative Studio I received some great advice that made me rethink of  some decisions that I had in mind for my self. Mariana who is the owner of the company took the time to talk to me and asked me important questions like in what direction I was heading and if I wanted to freelance or work for another company. I told her that I wanted to work for my self and that I wanted to mainly focus on  branding and corporate image.  She opened up my eyes when she told me that she doesn’t recommend students to work for themselves right away because it’s harder to learn from our mistakes or gain experience. She said that I should try to work for different companies in the beginning to see how they work and learn from someone with experience. I never though of it that way until she explained it to me. She told me that before she started her own business she worked in different companies and did a lot of networking. She became good at what she does by watching others and learning from their mistakes. Working in these companies gave her more of an idea of what she wanted to do and she quickly went from doing photography to graphic design as well. It was really helpful talking to her and learning how she got started in the graphic design field. We spoke about all the new projects that she has for 2014 and some ideas she had in mind for me to do. Over all it was a great first day and I can’t wait to see what she has in the works for me!
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– March 10, 2014
Journal Entry 4
Mohammad Chowdhury
ADV 4900
Journal Entry 4
Today was a good day at the office. I got the chance to do some website designs for a client. I even got the chance to slightly play with the client’s current logo, as it looks pretty outdated with a block stencil typeface. After a few feedbacks from my supervisor, Tyler, I presented the designs to the Mixed Business Group’s creative director, Marc Balet. It was my first interaction with him so it was pretty cool presenting to the creative director. Now up until today I had only seen and worked in the front side of the office so I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how coolness factor the conference area. It has a real homey-lounge vibe with various artworks and other designs hanging on the wall. The office has just gotten 10 times cooler and it was a pretty cool environment to begin with as I had previously mentioned the laid back attitude of the team and the music. Yep, today was a good day in the office.
With a not so subtle transition I guess I should also talk a little bit about the reading for this week. Gross Domestic Freebie by James Surowiecki. It was an interesting read to say the least. Our generation takes the results of the digital age for granted, and free of cost. And that’s also how we view it, that it has no cost; however, this article discusses how this is a double-edged sword. Although apps and other free products online make our life easier, it also means someone is losing out. I don’t much care for the large companies losing some money but the people losing money is definitely an negative side effect of development.
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– March 6, 2014
Journal #5 – Astrid Sarmiento
Astrid Sarmiento
Intern at A.R.T.S.Y Magazine
On March 1st, we had our first official meeting since last December. Today’s meeting was to discuss and review the different artists that the entire team has pitched for our upcoming issue #7 which focuses on music. This meeting was quite different from other meetings because instead of just discussing our ideas. We actually sat and really listened to the material of each artist together. Usually we just note down the artist names or bands and we go home and listen individually but today we got down to business and really listened to the mix tapes and albums of each artist as well as their music videos. It was nice and it was different to vibe out and try out something totally different with my fellow colleagues.
All of this reminded me of the article read for our first homework called “How To Get a Job” by author Thomas L. Friedman and also the quizzes taken online. I recalled that the article had discussed on how an employer can add value and by working as a team at A.R.T.S.Y and coming up with strategic ways in which we can function better creatively in our meetings is quite beneficial in helping the both the employers and in helping our magazine grow. One of the questions in the quizzes asked how comfortable are you with changes or are you up for challenges. Really grasping the artist material and taking in on what they sang or rap and not just the beats was pretty challenging especially the hip-hop material but it was an interesting method and I hope that we repeat it on our later meetings.
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– March 1, 2014
Journal #4 – Astrid Sarmiento
Astrid Sarmiento
Intern at A.R.T.S.Y Magazine
Today I decided to work with Google Analytics. Since from our last writer’s meeting with the creative director which was from last December we were told that the demographics of our audience for the magazine site were mostly females. Today I was able to see an increase in our male audience population. We have a percentage of 53% of males (406 visits) coming to visit the site while for our female audience we have a percentage of 43% and a total of (360 visits) for that gender. Also, our new visitors are at 1,666 (68.84%) while our returning visitors are at 754(31.16%). It was interesting to see how our numbers have increased tremendously in our demographics since we have decided to change up our content and attract more of the male demographic.
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– February 28, 2014
Journal Entry 3
Mohammad Chowdhury
I’m a bit late with this entry but hey, better late than never, right? Not much happened at the internship last week, I mostly just continued on finishing up designing a client pitch. I did, however, get to listen in on a phone call with a client. Seeing the relationship between an agency and a client was pretty good. I realized that an agency’s role is not to just produce new creative work but to advise on existing ones, and know to not ditch work that was done before them. Key is to know what’s working, what needs improvement and what must be done from scratch. This makes me think of the Malcolm Gladwell article, Creation Myth. In its essence, the article addresses the topic of innovation that is inspired as opposed to stolen and ones that are created entirely from a blank canvas. The development of something as small as a mouse is chronicled as a means of showing how something can have various perceptions based on its usage and intended audience. We get a clear understanding of how necessity also leads to innovation. This principle applies to all facets of our life and it is no different in advertising. Viewed from a designer’s perspective, Gladwell’s article showcases the value of approaching design challenges with multiple solutions, as when dealing with clients and trying to meet their specifications. Moreover, the way everything can have various ways of being done is very true for design as different designers have different skillset and personal preferences that must constantly change from client to client while still maintaining their own style. No matter what happens, we must all stick to our guns.
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– February 27, 2014
Journal #3 – Astrid Sarmiento
Astrid Sarmiento
Intern at A.R.T.S.Y Magazine
So today one of our cover artists, singer and songwriter Maxine Ashley who was featured on issue 4 of our magazine was showcased on Vogue’s website. Her video premiere of Perpetual Nights off her latest EP/Mixtape Moodswings was displayed for all the public to see at Vogue.com. Thus, if she and her work were being advertised in Vogue it was only a matter of time that the public will soon be searching her name on the database and this is where my assignment came in. I was asked to maximize all the keywords on all the latest and past content we had on her in order to see our viewer count on our website increase even more.  Apart from this, our magazine had also posted the video of her on our website; therefore I had to add keywords to this as well.
After I was done from adding keywords to the site I moved on into the YouTube videos from our magazine’s channel in which she was featured in and I started adding more keywords to that too. After I had press saved, YouTube had given me a pop-up warning stating that I was using too much keywords and that there was a limit. I was quite baffled since just last week I had added as much keywords as I could and I hadn’t received a warning before but then I realized that I was in fact using more keywords this time so I lessened the count by eliminating some of the keywords. But before doing so I took a screenshot, so that the words that I had used could be used for the other videos as well.
Furthermore, I then took the initiative of advertising in all of my social networks our magazine’s post on Maxine Ashley’s video premiere. In retrospect, it is exciting to see this magazine growing so much and I’m extremely proud to be a part of their team as a writer and as a web intern. When one of our features like Maxine Ashley is getting noticed on big publications such as Vogue it means that we are doing an excellent job in following our mission, which is shedding light on up and coming artists!
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– February 17, 2014
Journal #2 – Astrid Sarmiento
Astrid  Sarmiento
Intern at A.R.T.S.Y Magazine
Today I have been assigned to extend the keywords for specific web posts of main and/or cover artists that have been feature for A.R.T.S.Y Magazine. For instance, rapper G4shi, designer Nana Boateng, singer Maxine Ashley, Designer Colm Dillane’s Kid Super Brand amongst other important figures to name a few. By adding more keywords to the posts of these specific artists I will be helping in bringing a broader audience. As a result, since there are so many posts and YouTube videos already in existence on some of these given artists, I was also assigned to add more keywords to any of the magazine’s YouTube Channel videos that presented these important figures as well. For each post and video I came up with as many keywords as I possibly could that related to the content that was being presented. All in all, I was able to learn more about YouTube today since I have never really dabbled with the technicalities behind it. I generally always visit this site to watch videos but I have never made my own account. Therefore, for a beginner at this, I was pleased to quickly find my way around some of the functions and as time progresses within this internship at A.R.T.S.Y Magazine I hope to learn more about this and more!
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– February 7, 2014
Journal #1 – Astrid Sarmiento
Astrid Sarmiento
Intern at A.R.T.S.Y Magazine
Today I began my first day as an Intern at A.R.T.S.Y Magazine for the creative team. I normally work with the writing team since I currently work as a journalist for the magazine but today I am excited to learn what goes on with the creative and design aspects of the magazine. The following tasks that I have been appointed to so far for the time being, are improving the SEO of the magazine’s website and branding their YouTube. So today I have decided to begin with improving their SEO. One of the things that I have been informed about firsthand is that A.R.T.S.Y Magazine is currently lacking on the keywords being used for their posts on their website. Therefore, in order for me to improve their SEO, I have been assigned to add more keywords to their posts. By doing so, I will help to increase the traffic for their website. Immediately, I was given their WordPress account login and password so that I could begin completing this task. Promptly, I suggested some ideas to the creative director, I discussed with him about long-tail marketing or long-tail keywords and how in most cases it could help in driving in more traffic than the shorter popular keywords that were currently being used. I noticed for many of the posts that they were a few keywords that were related to the post or the topic being discussed.
However, there are ways in which I was able to get even more specific in order to increase the website’s traffic. Therefore, I expanded furthermore into including the places/countries for example from where the artists are from and by also including similar keywords that are related to the short-term keywords for each posts. I also shared with the creative director about the search results pages on Google and how the unique variations at the end of a keyword when being typed on Google’s search bar could also be used for the keywords being used for a post in order to drive in more traffic.
Lastly, I mentioned Google Analytics and how under Admin, you can create goals where you can track a specific event or destination. I explained furthermore into detail to the creative director that by setting goals we will be able to start recording, tracking and collecting the data for certain activity from our audience which will helped notified us as to what they are mostly or specifically looking up when visiting the website. Overall, it has been an interesting experience thus far seeing the view counts for some of the posts increased after I have been adding more keywords to their posts. I was also pleased with the fact that the creative director acknowledged my ideas and suggestions for improving the SEO of the magazine’s website. It is for this reason that I have now been granted access to their Web Analytics so that I can begin setting up the goals for them as well.
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– January 31, 2014
Journal Fifteen
I was supposed to go into work last Friday to make up for the fact that I didn’t go last Tuesday, but I was having some trouble with my WordPress site for another class, so I decided I better try to work that out on a Macintosh computer at school. This week is the last week of school, so I am planning to go in on Friday afternoon. Obviously, that will be the last day.
I have just been so overwhelmed with all the work of my projects, that it has been hard to put in the hours on the job. I can’t use my USB flash drive there, so it is hard to look at or do any personal work. I am just trying to finish up the projects for JavaScript and PHP class. I also had to present my portfolio yesterday, and have to again later this week, so I have been trying to get that in order.
I am trying to sync everything up on that on an IPAD, so it takes some extra effort. There isn’t much else to report except to say that I enjoyed being in a graphics environment this semester, and that I think work like this could be fun. They seem to enjoy themselves, for the most part at the office I am in, so that seems good. One of the employees also does his outside work, so that keeps him busy as well.
I just have to try to find a place that can make customized business cards with rounded edges, and it doesn’t look like it is that easy to find a good place which does. I also have to print out my resume.
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– December 18, 2013
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