Ayano Morishima
Internship at RPGA Studio, Inc. Dept. of Communication Design, NYCCT/CUNY
You can check out what I do, more pictures, and join us to help the community from our social media page!
Website: RPGA Studio, Inc
Meetups: Go29!
Instagram: @rpga_interns
~First day~
I started my internship on September 12th. I was so excited about my internship that I came around the area 30 minutes early, and its never too late to come before the time to start your hours. My internship place is very relaxed and it is casual ware but some of the days we get paints on, so it is better to wear something that it ok to get the paint on. My first assignment was working on making stencils. I made stencils out of fruits and vegetables that was designed by our workers and stencils that are made out of words, Love, Respect, Resilience, and Tolerance. I thought it was very interesting because I never worked with stencils before and how to even make them. I learned how to use Cricut where you can cut paper and plastic sheets to cut.
~4-panel mural~
Continuing the project of the 4-panel mural that our community was inspired by Mondrian’s paintings. Our goal is to make difference in NYC by starting from art to get together with the community where most of the individual comes together within their ethnic, region, etc communities. We do a lot of installations through the Queen’s community and we sometimes work with 2 projects at the time. As a graphic designer, I do a lot of work in using Adobe programs especially photoshop but it is a great opportunity for me to go outside and talking to people in the community and accomplishing something together. RPGA, Studio consist of 3 workers with executive director/founder, and 4 interns in a different field.
~Victor and Victim talk~
I went to one of the CUNY Service Corps workshop. This workshop was very interesting. It is very nice to learn something that you don’t get to learn from any of the classes. As we learned about how to rephrase our habit of blaming others where we don’t realize in our daily lives. It was quite difficult to rephrase the sentences where they provided us. I started using this technique, however, it is quite difficult to change your habit of talking. Right now, I am trying my best to think a lot more than I speak where people can get easily affected by a way of talking and their tone of a person’s voice.
~Learning Technique~
I learned a lot in this past 4 weeks in my internship. It is always good to ask after you do some research rather if it just how to work with a program. I am now using Illustrator a lot in my internship, but if I can remember I used Illustrator less than comparing to other Adobe suite. So there is some time that I forgot several tools within the program and Youtube or any of the website online are very helpful before asking your co-worker. As my director/supervisor tells us, do what you got to do before asking. That means you took action, researched and used the resource you are given. Since the internet has most of the answers, it saves more time for myself and to the person who you are trying to ask.
~Doing something other than art/Don’t limit your self~
This past 2 weeks, me, fellow interns and the people from the RPGA Studio, we got together and cleaned up our neighboorhood. To be more specific, we went near Queens Center Mall and there is a little space between a parking lot and a highway. We have our previous steel installation but there are so many unwanted plants. We went there and cut them with weed cutters, and raked out of the leaves. It is a nice location where people can sit and enjoy outside. Since the in the food court in the mall is the only place you can sit. And there aren’t any places outside since the location of the mall is surrounded by highways. Some may think that cleaning is a pain, but I enjoyed the outside and doing something different than just a desk job. Like other meetups, we do a lot within the Queen’s community, and anyone can join us to volunteer.
~Graffiti Girl at 2 location~
This past 2 weeks, I’m working on the Graffiti girl with words, Love and Respect that is going to be made out of Steel and stencil that is going to be installed at 2 location, Steel only and Stencil and Steel. Steel only is located at the little space between the parking lot and the highway, another located is next to CVS. I’m working the one next to CVS, where we are going to make the girl and the first letter of L, spray painted on to the wall and the rest of the letters to be going down the hill making the word popping out of the wall. We started this project from the request from the NYC communities where there are so many unwanted plants outgrowing the location where everyone can enjoy, like the location near the highway. And by putting these objects, it’s really nice to see them while on the long traffic on the highway.
~Instagram and Social media~
Ever since my internship started my director/supervisor, told me that we are going to start Instagram for interns. I was surprised because I thought they already have some kind of social media for the inters, but apparently they only have the one that’s called, *RPGA studio where the director uses for her personal project. We have to upload 2 posts within a week, and it always makes me hesitant on what to post. And most of the time, I work on a project for at least 2 weeks. Because of that, I have to post something different and unique pictures and the comments. It is very interesting on things we talk about using any kind of social media. We talked about how to get people to follow you and like your post. What makes your post interesting and different from others so that people will follow. We do a lot of discussion in the studio, not like a meeting but more like a free talk while doing your work. *What I meant for the director’s personal project, my internship is based on director’s artwork, where I execute and perfect it in Adobe suite that represents her and to the community. An example would be the Graffiti girl, where the girl is representing her daughter. I am not really sure on what I feel on that particular, about that and it kind of feels weird. I can not really describe thing feeling I’m having.
~Installing in different locations~
During these past days, we have done a lot of outside work. Picking up trash, planting flower bulbs for the upcoming spring time. A lot of things we do are posted on our Instagram every single week, by every intern. The pictures are from a different location as I mention before. Since my first day at RPGA Studio, we interns followed our director’s idea and putting that idea into the community but now things are changing. More of the project is discussed with the interns and I am starting to do my part in a concept where I am creating a logo that works well with the graffiti girl that is shown in few pictures I posted. We now moved on from installing our art outside. We are currently working on asking our neighboorhood elementary school to design for their character that represents their school. We are going to pick the best to make it into a statue that will be placed in front of their location.
~Creating Logo and a T-Shirt~
In my internship at RPGA Studio, I started to work on creating a logo with the word “Action is the Answer”. It is within a big project that we are working on little before I started working in the studio. I began working with the typeface of graffiti because it will be a logo that would be placed with our graffiti girl. More information before discussion and in my blog post on Openlab site. It was kind of hard to process because this is the first project that I was given and I have no idea how to even draw a graffiti type typeface. I researched and finally got the hang of alternating with the typeface I already had. After I done some Illustrator work, I brought it through photoshop and began using spray-paint some texture with the logo I finished. We haven’t decided on what the color is going to be, because I was working with a graphic designer in the studio and I am going to see approval from my director real soon, but right now I am still in working process where they said that this logo making project deadline is in a month so I have still enough time to fix it if my director wants me to change anything. The graffiti girl and the logo will be on the t-shirt we are making. This t-shirt would most likely be given out to the volunteers.
~Type of color use~
This 2 weeks, I have been working with different types of combination of colors and brush textures in photoshop. Sometimes it is difficult with picking the right color for the logo if your client does not specify at first. So what I did was I started to pick colors that were used for the graffiti girl we have, because she will be also on the t-shirt. The first image is color based off from the girl and I started to add in more feminine color. I decided to go away from picking pink since the girl has a personality of boldness, boyish, and independence. So I picked a red-ish color and a blue-purple. I made the color gradient so that it blends naturally and that is how we colored our graffiti girl. The example of brush texture is an image above this post. I made this 3 colored logo and I sent it to my director if I should fix it to fit the color or any tweaks to the words. Hoping to work more on this a little bit more and move on to more amazing artwork I will be doing at the internship.
~Reflection~
