To be honest sometimes I really don’t like the menu designs that we are creating. Because clients do not want to spend much money on their menu but they want to put every little information in there. Some of them still want old fashioned graphic style like boxes and bursts while some of them wants very overwhelming and busy layouts. Even though you try to convince the client in order to keep your artistic dignity and/or find reasonable ways to satisfy them, you end up with a design that client approves.

However, this week I have worked on a menu that was really modern, clean, and elegant looking. It was for a catering company that serves mostly in Manhattan. Instead of folded brochure they prefer booklet. As a result of that there were so many white space in the layout. Images on the menu were high quality professional pictures. Even the paper plays very important role when you want to make something noticeable. The typeface, leading, margins… all these elements have their own space without squeezing the other. What makes me surprised more is that Marla designed that beautiful catering catalog. When I first met with her I thought she uses the software very well but she lacks the design skills. However, I realized that under given conditions she can create an artwork as well. This also shows that in the real business world you are not going to get job offers that matches your artistic skills or expectations. I think how picky you can be is related to how much money you need.

This week we are working on a new logo for a life counseling company named “Love to the people” and worked together to get as many ideas as we could. They taught me that the first ideas are sometimes the most common but they help you build on other ideas. In other words you have to get them out of your head in order for you to design something better. A good example of this was when giving the name of the company we each though we should have a heart in the logo. Being that this was our first idea we had to push further to think of what else can represent “love” without showing a heart that is so literal. We also said that maybe a heart is the right way to go but it had to be completely different from all the other hearts that are used in different logos. The thought process was really good because I got to see and hear how they come up with different ideas and the reason something wouldn’t work. After sketching and brain storming we started to design on illustrator. The design process took a few days and we narrowed down our selection to the design that best represented the over all message. I had many good ideas but they made me refine them because I tend to put many details into the logo which can get lost when its resized. The lesson of the week for me was “less is more” when designing a logo. The internship is going well, and I like how they take the time to explain things to me and show me how I can make it better.

Today my task was to design a business card for Angels Consultant Services. The company had a lot of information that had to go on the card and requested to have a simple but elegant design. They also allowed us to use color which I think is a favorable feature but where the challenge came in was finding the right position to but all the information and make it look nice, simple and readable. I was told to make three different versions so I did two horizontal and one vertical to see which one would look best with the information giving. Although I did not have to make a logo for the company I tried to make the name of the company stand out. I was advised that when you have many information you can put the most important ones bigger and what’s not as important can go really small. This way you have more room to play around with the design and you can create nice visuals with the different sizes. I decided to play around with shapes and angles for the vertical card because I wanted to make it a little more interesting and dynamic. For the horizontal cards I used bars to bring the attention to a certain area. I was not completely satisfied with the business cards because I felt like the whole process was rushed. She said that they did not pay a lot for us to give them more ideas and their was also another project that we had to work on that had to be finished by the end of this week. She also said that the client will let us know if we should do another design or just rearrange what we have.

The next project we moved on to was a single page Ad that will be featured on the “bump magazine”. The Ad is promoting our company’s baby photography packages for this up coming year. I was giving specific instructions on how the design should stay true to the brand identity of glyph creative studio. To keep the brand looking the way it should I had to use centric gothic for the font and use the color blue for the background. What I was allowed to change was the layout of the ad and I was able to select the baby pictures that I felt was right for the promotion. I also came up with a cool pattern for the background and helped wording the phrases that she wanted to incorporate. This was a fun project and a learning experience on how to design around  the identity of a company.

I read the Article “brainstorming myth” by Jonah Lehrer I found it to be really interesting. In the beginning of the article it talks about how in the late nineteen forties Alex Osborn decided to write a book on how effective working in teams could be. As I am reading the first few paragraphs I can’t help but to agree with the idea that when you work with a group of people that listen to you and don’t shut you down you are more open to discuss your ideas. I thought that working in groups would help someone who is shy speak up a little more because they can bounce back ideas from each other. I also thought that brainstorming was a great way to get your mind thinking by hearing what others have to say. I was in shock when I continued to read and they said that Brainstorming does not work. The reason why I found this hard to believe because if it doesn’t work then why do we continue to use this system. According to a study done at Yale University there was a group of twenty five students that had to follow team brainstorming and another group that did brainstorming on their own. To my surprise the group who worked individually was the one who came up with the most effective ideas. The same study has been done many times before and they still end up with the same conclusion “it doesn’t work”. In my opinion I don’t think that working in groups is completely ineffective there are pros and cons to it like everything in life. I personally don’t have a problem working alone or in a group I think everyone should try brainstorming both ways to see which one works best for them.