Getting acquainted with the pace of the printing business is something that is taking a bit of time to get a handle on, but I am getting a little better at it. My newest project is the same as I did on my first day a menu. Fortunately this time around I am a bit more familiar with handling the design of a menu and so I am able to work at a faster pase. Working on these allows me to get some feed back from my supervisor when it comes to choosing the right look for the client. I am given creative freedom to develop designs for a client so there isn’t too much brainstorming going in a time sensitive environment. After taking a good number of design classes, brainstorming is one technique that is frequently suggested and taught when coming up with a creative solution for our projects.

The article written by Jonah Lehrer stated that brainstorming, developed and introduced by Alex Osborn, doesn’t work. A Yale University study in 1958 took Osborn’s techniques to increase creativity to two separate groups. One group was told to work together to find a solution to a problem while the other group were individuals working alone to solve the same problem. The results were that the group of individuals came up with a more creative solution than the brainstorming group. The article went on to speak of having small conversations with people of different fields of study as to what could be the real essence of finding a creative solution and not just having one group dedicated to a specific field to generate creativeideas. I’m not saying it is not impossible, but it’s always good to have a different perspective at times.

After finishing up any necessary edits to the menu for George’s Café and Diner I was assigned my next project. A client who came in the day before asking for a business card design to be printed for his nightclub.  He didn’t have a digital copy of his business card and it was given to me as my next project to recreate their logo and business card as close as possible to the original. I also did some quick window display projects for a deli.

While working on the window displays I learned that some clients aren’t interested in the design aspect of the projects they just want to have the images and prices of their items to be visible as this is more important. Also the images used had to have the look of and feel of a convenience item. I also I learned how vinyl letters that are used on trucks a signs are made. The letters are cut into a colored vinyl sheet from a machine called a plotter. The machine takes outlined vector file information and cuts the shape into the vinyl sheet. When completed, the undesired areas of the design are manually peeled away leaving only the letters.

Though Monday was the appointed day to start my internship it wasn’t the case when I came in on Monday. I asked Scott, who handles the large format prints, if Jaime left any work left for me to do and he said that there was a death in Jaime’s family and I could wait and see if he comes in.  So I decided to occupy my time by trying to make some stationery templates for their website. I looked at JLC’s website to see what they have available in their stationery packages as a reference. I did that until it was time for me to go and it was that same time Jaime came in. He explained the situation that and explained why he wasn’t able to leave me any work. He went on to say that he would have a project for me on Thursday.

The project I was given was to design the menu for George’s Café and Diner. The current menu is printed in a single color and the owner now wants the images of the dishes on the menu to be printed in color. To easily input the text into the menu’s layout the current menu was scanned and then opened in text recognition software. It took the printed words and converted the printed text back into digital text. When I first started the layout of the menu I was told to do the whole menu in Photoshop but then it was getting hinder some and I asked Jaime if it was alright if I switched over to InDesign and he said it was fine and I should use whatever program I felt comfortable using to get the job done. The biggest time saver for the project was having the scanned menu into an OCR file. It would have taken me a whole lot more time to manually type out the menu. Though the program itself wasn’t100% perfect with recognizing the letter forms it was still a big help in getting the project completed.

I received a confirmation email from JLC Printing and Graphics to come in on monday to get a tour of the facility. I’m relived that I finally found a business to do my internship and its also a plus that the travel distance isn’t too far.  The size of JLC was a little smaller than what I had envisioned it to be, never the less I will do the best I can here for next few months. Jaime, who will be my supervisor, gave me a brief history of his business as well informing me what I will be doing during my time at JLC and where my workstation will be. Along with working on some projects for clients I will also be working on creating images for the products that JLC offers and the images will be used on their website.Staring Monday I will be an intern for JLC Printing & Graphics. My working days are scheduled for Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays from 10am- 5pm. This will give the feel and some experience for what it will be like in the work force when dealing with time sensitive projects.

After sending out emails to some of the places that were on the list, I also looked into creating an account on internships.com. I applied to two that I thought I would be able to do and waited for a response. I decided to go back to the list of companies from Prof.Mason to see if their internship positions were still available. Some of them didn’t respond and some did to say that the position wasn’t being offered at this time. I did get a response asking me to send in a copy of my resume and class schedule from JLC Printing and Graphics so they could schedule in the days for me to come in.

The process of getting an internship is very similar to looking for a job. You look for the business that offers the position you want, then you send in the necessary documents and wait for a response. Some business will give you a response and it will be either for an interview, to say the position is already filled, they are not offering it at this current time, or there is no response. These situations are why I have yet to acquire and internship. I find that getting back no response can at times discourages a person from continuing the search which leads them to procrastinate in trying for another.

I know that I’ve procrastinated more often than I should, and I have wondered what were some of the reasons people procrastinate and found some good explanations for those reasons. In James Soruwiecki’s article, “Later”, gives some explanations why we wind up procrastinating on our tasks. He says the “lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination.” It can also be applicable to most procrastinators that we are “pretending that I wouldn’t have any interruptions to work” is one of the reasons why we put things off for another day. After reading this article it has made me try a little harder in avoiding the unnecessary hesitation of doing the work that I need to get done.

Today was the first day for my internship class I’m a bit nervous on what will happen as the class goes on. I know looking for an internship is a key part of the class but I’m a little nervous about the whole process about the search.Its always a thought I’ve had that those looking for a job or internship may wonder will I be good enough for this business? Being a college student I find myself as well (as some would when they are nearing the end of their schooling) asking I if they will find a job in the field of their study. Reading the article “How to Get a Job” from the New York Times added some insight into some ways employers decide on potential employees. Reading that employers test applicants to see if they “can add value” to their company can often force people to improve their skills and qualifications. What surprised me the most was that some of the job qualifications a person needs can be learned from massive open online courses that are offered by some reputable colleges. I’ve come to realize that these coursed are very similar to the tutorial videos that are posted on online to help people learn or improve upon a skill to become one of the quickest ways people are learning some of the skills college students are paying to learn and are now competing for a job.

So this is my last week at the internship. Working at Whiteboard Animation studio was an interesting experience. I’ve met a lot of cool people like Dee, Zach and Beni who always kept the atmosphere of the place light as their conversations are always funny with a lot of odd ball jokes.

The final week the director had put me on a project for the company Accenture. the animation was practically finished but according to Steve, among further inspection, he noticed the lip-sync was either slightly off or wasn’t moving at all so he just wanted me to fix that. Halfway done he comes over the look at the fixed project and notices something else that would need tweeking. He mentions that the character could show more expression if his eyebrows moved along with the tone of his voice.

I didn’t really want to go but I have already surpassed the internship course time and it is their choice if they wanted to keep me or not. The director and manager had told me to keep in touch though as I thanked them for the experience and that I would be more than happy to continue working with them if they are looking to hire.

This is the week before the end of my internship time and things are starting to kick up. There are a lot of deadlines coming up for the other animators so many of them are helping with each other in those projects. They didn’t put me into any of them because it would be a lot to take in and adjust to since those were quite big projects.

Spencer decided to put me on something that wasn’t due for some time. It was for the company itself, Whiteboard Animation Studio. They hired someone to help create a new website for them and they needed logos and icons for various subjects. Icons that would represent what clients they potentially serve or topics their clients are looking for. It was my job to draw out things like faces, vials, needles, paw prints, pillows, trees, anything that would represent a client’s idea or theme they were thinking about doing. I was able to dish out about thirty different icons plus a few that were already created by one of the other animators before he was reassigned to one of the projects that was due soon.

By the end of the week, I would have to export each of the images and placed into a special folder to be able to be used for the new site being created for Whiteboard Animation Studio. I am waiting and excited to see, once the site is done, my drawings being used on it. I would be very happy knowing that I helped make the site.

It is now the fourth week in. At the beginning of the week I spoke to Spencer if he had anything for me to do this week.  He told me there was a project that was basically done, but it just needed some simple lip-syncing and movement.

The project was for a company called Afton and it was to explain their customer service. Everything was there already so it was just the case of switching between images for the lip-sync and drawing some images for simple head tilts and arm movements even blinking. Once that was done, Spencer reviewed it and sent it off to the client. The next day, Spencer sent me an email saying that the client wanted to remove the title cards that were shown between each scene. That was a bit of a challenge because I had to also remove the section of audio that went with it and move over the scenes on the timeline while making sure the leftover audio and animation were still in sync.

By the near end on the week I was done fixing the animation and exported the final render. Spencer gave it the thumbs up and sent it on it’s way to the client. He then told me the client was happy with it. I was happy that the last minute overhaul was great.