This week has been the most tedious of all weeks. Black Friday was right around the corner so I was asked to design two social media Instagram pictures and two website banners. The designs were for the Black Friday promotions as well as the return of the Lip bar’s popular black lipstick Night owl. I was extremely happy I was able to finish the designs before the deadline. In the previous journal entries I discussed the donation campaign Melissa, the founder of the Lip bar,  had set into play. Just to refresh your memory, the goal of this campaign was to generate enough donations from Lip bar clients so the funds can be used to buy a Lip bar truck. On the Lip bar truck clients will be able to try on shades from the Lipstick line as well as make their own formulas on the truck.  This is to ensure that every customer walks away with a shade that suits there skin tone. Every lipstick that was purchased formed a contribution. What I wasn’t aware of was most of the orders had not been shipped out as of yet. I also learned that some of the prepared orders were not finished as well. So guess what was in store for me! From the past days I have been attending my internship it consisted of minor design, but primarily box folding. In total I folded about 110 boxes while Melissa, and Rosco-the creative director, and other interns helped out with the rest. In total 300 boxes had to be assembled and packed with every donators order. The first step was to take wrapping paper and line every box. The second step consisted of taking a white bag, which had the lip bar logo on it, place a business card inside, and a Lip bar pen. The third step consisted of going through every customers order and placing their lipsticks within a small pouch, then placing it in the first bag, wrapping it with the wrapping paper then closing the box. Most of the boxes had the names of the customer on it with the word “Cheers” in front of their names. After all of this tedious work was done 189 orders were finished and shipped. There were only 39 packages left. The last orders were not finished because most of the lipsticks that were in the orders were out of stock, so Melissa had to make some. With the addition of all of this work I received the pictures from last weeks photo shoots. Most of them didn’t come out so great. I am not to pleased about this outcome but there is also a video in the works so maybe I will be able to take some video stills. I just know that was a very long ordeal after I was finished with the day I was tremendously exhausted.

All of my work is coming to fruition now. I say this because everything I have been working on is coming together. When I say all of my work I mean my intern work and my school work. Honestly speaking, I have never worked this hard in my time in Graphic Design school. Im proud of myself, I have come a long way since my freshman year. My confidence is a lot higher, but my work can improve a lot. I am achieving goals I set before starting the semester. One goal was proving to myself that I can become a really good graphic designer. I wasnt very good at photoshop and illustrator but I saw tutorials and practiced until I got comfortable with the software. I see when it comes to software its all practice, once you do it everyday it becomes second nature. I feel the reason I am succeeding at my internship is because of all of the hardwork I put in prior to going into JLC Print. I also got a lot of practice at JLC Print with software and I got practice on speaking to clients.

I am now comfortable talking to customers and pitching ideas to them.

This weekend was possibly the busiest weekend I had with my boss this semester. I met with my boss Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday for more editing of the mockups, presenting them to people from another cafe we were at, and my boss editing the copy he gave me and editing the content so there’s less information and grammar corrections for each page. Apparently, my boss decided to edit the content straight from the Photoshop file I was using instead of from the copy he gave me from the email. While he was doing that, he wanted me to look up on how to collect people’s e-mail addresses so they can keep record of how many subscribe to their site when they have it up. Looking it up from my phone, I found a couple of sites relating to what he was looking for. This was referred to as A/B testing, and one of things this does is allow the user to collect e-mails and keep record of how many subscribers are up or removed from their site. This stuff is new to me so I’m not entirely sure whether this is what my boss is looking for so I might have to speak with someone else, like my professors at CityTech, to see if they know more about this.

On Tuesday, we met at the office and discuss on one of the webpages that has been bugging most of us since I designed it: The “Cause” page. The “Cause” page looks really busy with all the information provided and the image background. I tried my best to make it more simple but it still looks like a mess. I spoke with my boss of coming up with ideas to make the site looks more appealing by moving around the image at a better angle and only having one description box instead of two with the sidebars like what was shown on the “Story” and “Team” page. He agreed on this and had me work on it at the office. The result was a success! The only problem was the pinkish-color which should be slightly darker so the text can be legible and the opacity for the description box be the same as the ones from the “Story” and “Team” page. I will be meeting up with him at the office again on Friday to review the final result for the “Cause” page I’m working on and the information on how to collect subscribers e-mail addresses.