An update on Interning for CoCoaKawaii, we’ve been preparing content and advertising for Patches&Pins NYC. I been receiving various of assignments throughout the week to design for my supervisor. Updating each other and booking different events and making promotional digital prints for her to advertise on her instagram.
This week I am attending a few networking events.
SexExpo on Saturday October 1, 2022
and I’ve attended New York ComicCon on Saturday, October 8, 2022
both events were conventions. Both in two different directions.
SexExpo is hosted at
SexExpo was more of an older & mature crowd of people but very open with themselves. Talked about sex and the different ideas and behind the act itself with the type of booths at the conventions. Displays of varies of toys for pleasure and costumes. I felt like I’ve been missing out on a lot of adult rated conversing all my short adult years. But hearing how a lot of these people at this event treat the topic of sex and all the toys and gadgets all lenient and openly, was quite intriguing.
New York Comic Con was hosted at
Jacobs Javits Center – New York, NY.
New York Comic Con was more like a huge party of ‘nerd’ and pop culture influencers within the Javits Center. It was full of booths and tables. Artist alley, different brands, cosplayers
During the course of my time, combatting classes and formerly interning for Mott Haven Fridge Network, I continuously been looking for more opportunities best suitable for me. I religiously check handshake everyday and review offers that I receive.
Being involved within the ‘Nerd culture’ and going to conventions like ComicCon and AnimeNYC, I been networking more with artists and creatives. More of the niche I aspire to be within. I came across an artist and brand called CoCoaKawaii.
I was hired to be her graphic designer and assistant. Her brand represents kawaii culture and promotes to be aspired towards everyone, not only the stereotypical ‘asian’ niche clan.
CocoaKawaii is a small business that hand makes jewelry and accessories out of resin. Promoting kawaii culture as an african american woman. Kawaii means cute in Japanese, and the kawaii scene is mostly seen across asians and fair skinned people. Cocoakawaii represents herself as a colored woman who promotes the culture to everyone, and brings happiness and cheer with her cute accessories.
My last day interning for Mott Haven Fridge Network was September 4, 2022.
Over the course of time interning as a volunteer intern, I really started to see my value as a graphic designer. I was not accepting the poor work conditions I was working within. As this was a remote graphic designer internship position, it was not worth having my work being devalued and the pile up of slack work that I was given. My time and work as an artist is worth more than just interning for someone that devalues my work, time and effort.
A work environment and brand should respect you and your time. Everyone has a life and a schedule and as professionals we all need to realize that there are boundaries we have to set for ourselves & our tolerance.
I’ve resigned from interning as the Graphic Designer within Mott Haven Fridge Network.
The final designs I’ve created for the brand are the following: 
I can speculate the appreciation of the skills and practice I’ve received from GrassRootsGrocery and the Designs I was able to create.
The following are the live social media posts where my designs were used.
So as interning for Mott Haven Fridge Network & I am asked to create a social media campaign for the brunch. I created a series of digital prints, recreating an example that was given to me to reiterate the design with the information provided to me. After many recreations, the whole idea of the replication was scrapped.
Once my digital prints were not something as envisioned to be used for the social media advertisements. I was asked to edit and recreate a flyer to the correct barcode and small adjustments.
During this week, starting the new internship at Mott Haven Fridge, as the graphic designer. I was given tasks to accomplish on an abrupt timely basis. There was no specific schedule given to me, so throughout the day I kept receiving design work to get done. I started on August 31, 2022. Around attending my courses, I was designing social media advertisements and various sizes of digital prints that will be used to advertise a charity event hosted by Mott Haven Fridge. Mott Haven Fridge Network is a non-profit organization that helps those in need of food through a donation program they are running. https://www.motthavenfridge.com/
I was asked to design flyers and social media posts for an event they were hosting that had sponsorships with other brands and companies.
I had edited and added the logo for GrassRootsGrocery on photographs they took in the past.
I was also advised by the Director, to start to learn email design, so I made a mock up of an email design as a draft to learn the skill.
I was Interning at the Queens Public Library, and over the course of time there I was assisting them in making signs and merchandising the design of the library. And over the course of the first week of class, I was on the hunt intensively for a more in depth internship role within another company, brand or business. I applied to various of internships through Handshake and WayUp.
On August 31, 2022, I was reached out by Daniel Zauderer to Intern as the Graphic Designer for Mott Haven Fridge Network. Right away I had to start on 2 digital prints to reconstruct for him as part of the internship process. https://www.motthavenfridge.com/ And right after submitting the desire flyers that was requested, he accepted my work and welcomed me with the internship offer. And following the same day, I’ve gotten a set of digital prints submitted to him by the deadlines of 12pm. The digital prints created consisted of social media marketing and digital prints for him to print for an event the brand was hosting. 
Photo 2: The first photo I took of my new idea. A pack of new (unblown) balloons with a background of finished blown balloons.
Photo 3: My Original First Photo (Scrapped Idea due to uncooperative elements..)
Photo 4 & 5 : 2 Photos from my mini shoot I also had liked.
Juxtaposition is putting two things together in one fame. Usually these are opposites: old and young, new and used, perfect and imperfect, manmade and natural, poverty and affluence. Look around at what you have available to you to work with and select two small objects that represent opposites.
Experiment with your composition. Fill the frame. At least one of your two objects should be at least partially cropped. Take a minimum of 10 pictures, trying different approaches for each frame. Post your first shot and your last shot in a gallery block. Explain your process. What did you do to improve your shot and make it more interesting? Category: Lab: Week 2 – Juxtaposition
Dawoud Bey is a famous American photographer. Bey has experienced hearing loss at a young age. But with loss to hear, he expresses himself through his vision & sight. He uses photography as an expression to showcase different views on things. As he produced a book of his photos, published by the University of Texas Press, “Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply”. An impressive 40-year retrospective of his work in a 400-page book.
A Couple in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1990. From the “Black-and-White Type 55 Polaroid Street Portraits” series.Credit…Dawoud Bey/University of Texas Press
This photo shows a couple in a park. The park is Prospect Park located in Brooklyn, New York. This photo captures the time of 1990. It reveals how people were dressed, it holds a moment that was once in time for this couple. The feel of this man and woman prideful to be amongst each other’s arms and on this date in a park, in love. The way they are dressed as well, you feel as if a different era of time.
Carrie Mae Weems is an American artist who works with text, fabric, audio, digital images, and installation video, and is best known for her work in the field of photography. She is known for creating installations that combine photography, audio, and text to examine many aspects of existing American life. Kitchen Table Series is the first publication dedicated solely to this early and important body of work by the American artist Carrie Mae Weems. The 20 photographs and 14 text panels that make up Kitchen Table Series tell a story of one woman’s life, as conducted in the intimate setting of her kitchen. “The kitchen table” series project shows the dissimilar voices from the evaluation of women. The kitchen, one of the primary spaces of domesticity and the traditional domain of women, frames her story, revealing to us her relationships—with lovers, children, friends—and her own sense of self, in her varying projections of strength, vulnerability, aloofness, tenderness and solitude.
Cover Photo of the book “Kitchen Table Series” By Carrie Mae Weems.
The cover photo of Carrie Mae Weem’s Book, “Kitchen Table Series presents the author herself at a kitchen table. She sits at a kitchen table with a vanity mirror and a few lipsticks with a little girl. The little girl could be her daughter or niece. They both have mirrors and lipsticks, bonding with beauty. This moment of innocence, femininity and motherhood in one.
Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems both use photography to express there voice. They both represent different messages within each of there photos in the style of black and white images. Capturing moments that express a message of their perspectives for a viewer to have any understanding and emotion. Both photographers use people and particular settings to photograph in order to represent the moments of time they want to be portrayed.
I was paired with Ilda for this assignment. In the photo on the left, She has her hand open with fingers together, as presenting the wall. I recreated her photo in a bit of a fun interpretation of the corner of my room and my hand open towards presenting my plushies in the photo on the right.
In the first photo on the left, was the photo I took of my hand with a ring, as if it was capturing an engagement ring moment. On the right, is the photo my partner Ilda took of her hand with a ring as well as her own recreation.
In the photo on the left is Ilda’s recreation of my photo. On the right is my photo of my hand. Of each of us holding the hand of a teddy bear. Trying to capture a gentle moment holding a stuffed toy.
The OpenLab is an open-source, digital platform designed to support teaching and learning at City Tech (New York City College of Technology), and to promote student and faculty engagement in the intellectual and social life of the college community.
