It’s been roughly about three months over here at Sacatelle, and I’d say I’ve had an awesome experience! Not going to lie, overall, it started slow, but then the experience became more and more fulfilling, with familiarization of standard programs, learning new techniques,  communicating with general design yet again, new ways to showcase my skills, and so on!

Since my first day at Sacatelle, I have made multiple, colorful illustrations, stepped out of multiple comfort zones for the better, learned to adapt to a more simple illustration style, like flat design, been appointed to the main design team, designed bags for real clients which are portfolio worthy, and made multiple connections with my supervisors and coworkers! I’d like to give a special thanks to my ex-supervisor Ramone, who has recently departed from the company, for showing me and all from the Marketing Team all that he could about good design, creative and critical thinking, and for being a down to earth, cool manager. I’m sure he’ll continue to go far, as will I!

Even though this company and what it does is far from what I do, the principle of arts and design still applies, and I love the people I’ve met working here! Design: To be able to visualize a problem and creating a beautifully designed, visually pleasing solution. The Sacatelle Design Team, Ramone, and City Tech has ensured this golden rule will stay with me to the next endeavor and far beyond, when I become a concept/character art success!

In advance, when I depart from the company, I am truly going to miss them all.

Okay, so, there have been some changes here at the Sacatelle office! The perhaps biggest of which was my marketing team supervisor, Ramone, had apparently departed from the company. Details were of course discreet, but it was the Chief Creative Officer and the Director who broke the news to us. At first I didn’t know what to think: did he leave for a greater opportunity or was there a family emergency, or what, but it was sad to hear this. I mean… that man built this team from nothing, and he really had a cool way of managing things. I will contact him later today to give him my best wishes.

Onward, both higher-ups had moved the illustrators, myself and my coworker Makayla, to the Design Team. Along with rearranging furniture around so that both teams can be in the same room and sync well, and using the marketing team’s old office as a lounge/meeting room for clients and workers, both the director and officer felt this is was the most efficient way to move things forward and so everyone can get the most use out of their experience here. All this was official yesterday, Tuesday. By then, I was already working on concepts of tote bags (real, Photoshop concepts) for clients, and I’ve been LOVING it. This has honestly been on my mind to be apart of this for some time, so it was great the director really saw the value of my concept and illustration skills. During my short time on this team, I’ve had plenty of fun familiarizing myself with good photo editing techniques and Photoshop itself, and I’m glad to have two mentor, who are the generals of this team, show me the ropes so I could make the best bags possible.

I say to myself “Despite that this is an unpaid internship, It feels more like fun than work, I easily get along with my coworkers, and I’m getting plenty of experience, especially now that I’m working on things for REAL clients.” Nonetheless, it’s unpaid. Still, I’m getting the most out of Sacatelle that I can, and while I have recently started sending out applications for paid jobs, I don’t mind sticking around.
Here are some samples I’ve made for my current client, Dammit! Dolls, who make durable stress-relief items. As requested, it is a polypropylene bag concept, and they wanted mostly to have fun with the placement of the logo and emblem.

Okay, This next one’s going to be GOOD! So, much has been happening at the Sacatelle studio. So much that I almost completely forgot that March is Women’s History Month, a time of the year celebrating some of our greatest female pioneers that paved the way for equality and women everywhere. Personally, I draw a lot of women. Top reason why is because to me, they’re much more interesting and creative to me, in terms of appearance and design. I’m highly skilled in drawing anatomy and digital painting, but there are still things I could improve on. Anyway, the supervisor threw this idea to me:

A recreation of the world famous “We Can Do It” Poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 to boost worker morale. The idea was to make “Rosie the Riveter” hold a bag in some way that shows “Power to women… with a bag!”
Here were the first sketches:

I felt the third was the strongest, especially it was the closest to the original poster. Supervisor agreed it was strong, and perhaps strongest, but he wanted the second. I loved the second as well, but I stand by my opinion. Anyway, here is the final product! I really love how it came out! So did the staff. It’s already posted on out Instagram!
“I’m a woman! What’s your superpower?”
Caption by Ikey, Chief Creative Officer.

If it wasn’t already obvious, March has been a busy month for us here at the intern team! Phew! Okay, so priority first: Educational Video. We decided to put that on the back-burner for now, since generating it and its content was taking a bit too long. So what took priority was  the website, again. As Director of Operations, Isaac reiterated this point of how important recreating the site was, he and Ikey, Chief Marketing Director, would visit our section of the studio for the nest couple weeks to help and direct us on what might be a great way to recreate the site. After plenty of time spent, we landed on a certain theme and color scheme. The theme was very environmental! Here is a snippet.

Home page background, part of a much lengthier animated image.

In the Contact Us tab, there’s a beautifully drawn water theme there, with some content created by me and a couple other illustrators! Here are some snippets:

Otherwise, there’s been talk and simple redesigning of the company logo. Co-worker threw the thought to the rest of us at the office, but it turns out recreating the logo has been talked about and attempted for a while now. Still, the Director feel it definitely was a good time to redesign the logo, since we were redesigning other things. Here were some first concepts from a coworker:

There was a lot of nice ideas when I finally saw this. When I was out sick for two days, there was another concept being worked on. So, this was the final choice! It looks very clean and neat. i loved the colors, too, but I feel like the logo with an S bag emblem was strongest. Not only was the font brilliant, but there’s an incorporation of a bag in the logo. In the new one, the emblem doesn’t really resemble a bag without some sort of handle.Something that shows what we’re about. But, eh…

It’s mid-March, and we’re making progress on that educational video, but of course not without some technical and priority issues! Still, things are looking well, and the animators are hard at work, making the animated script look in tip-top shape! For now, It was all about content, and me and my co-worker Victoria were on the case! i was working on sketches on possible Clover leaf bags and posters while she was making concepts on a possible St. Patty’s day GIF!

I hd no idea what direction I was going in, so i drew more and thought less, which works well when you have no initial idea.Supervisor was really digging the leprechaun hat bag the most and gave me the green light. I began designing concepts on Adobe Illustrator, and within the next week or so, I made these.

While Victoria made this! This was so damn cool! it’s animated, but too bad it’s not supported here.

It’s been about a month and some change over here at Sacatelle! Things are going pretty smooth here and there. I’m familiarizing myself with Adobe, mainly the big three (Photoshop, illustrator, and inDesign), as I don’t use Adobe for my professional/personal work, which is Concept Art. Still, feels pretty good remembering how the Pen Tool works and to use it and its associates efficiently, while using new/unfamiliar tools, like the Shape Builder tool/ Anchor Point tool. I figure this will all be super helpful, since the mainstream design field is pretty much run by Adobe.

Update: So, we’ve been having mini-meetings for the past two weeks about building the script for the educational video, and so far, we’ve made good progress! About 3 versions, I’d say. We landed with one, and loved it!  From then, we started doing recording for the script, utilizing the soft, elegant voice of my co-worker, Chanelle. With some tweaks, we perfected the recording. Afterwards, my co-worker Xuemin began animating the script, via Adobe After Effects.

Liquid Animation (1)

Okay, so,  I made it through a whole week at Sacatelle and it was an awesome one! Over that time I got to properly introduce myself to  the rest of my team and the official design team. Everyone is super damn cool and laid-back. People I’d definitely hang with. It’s really cool that they are as serious with their work as they are down-to-earth. The typical worker day is our office hours: 9:30 am-5:30 pm. We interns usually get lunch around 12:30-1pm. Management, including our supervisor, are pretty swell to talk to as well, on or off-work topic. In fact, I love to watch the supervisor and director oppose on opinions because it gets comically dramatic! Haha.

Anyway, after last week, Isaac, the director, gave us a much clearer direction on how we should be creating content efficiently. Long-term projects, like the site and educational video, should be given only a couple hours of time in a shift. whereas a short-term project, like social media banners, or special holiday posters, should be dished out first. for this week, I proposed an idea to Ramone, the supervisor, depicting three different bags with three poster designs but all tie together under one message “We Got You!”. As in, whatever your company’s business, we can make it into a bag! Here are the final designs of the bags:

Monday finally arrives!! I’m not a big fan of Mondays, especially when I had to start at 9:30 Am. Also, not a morning person, but I was excited to start two nights before!  I arrive at the office, ten minutes before starting time and there other workers who were also early! They all looked as energetic and ready to go as I was and so we introduced ourselves to one another. 9:30 rolls around and our supervisor gives us a warm welcome, describing Sacatelle: what we’re about and do we offer to the field!

Afterwards, we are informed on our first project! According to the supervisor, one of the biggest tasks planned was to reconstruct the company site, and he felt the first step to that was working on the educational video. The purpose of the video is to inform our audience on our entire process on making your perfect tote bag for your company, from discussing design aspects, to the type of material to use to make it. We already had one, but he feel it was a bit outdated to the company’s current demographic and that we needed one more simply designed and eye catching. There were four of us graphic designers working on the visuals while the copywriter interns were working marketing aspects of the site. Me and my two new co-workers, we were thinking of multiple interesting and playful ways to tell the process, including a visual meter that would playfully fill up as client and designer reach a conclusion, or dancing bags on an assembly line!

It was a bit difficult to come up with good concepts on my part, since I was a bit rusty on graphic design, plus, it isn’t my main career focus. BUT, I was happy to get back into the game! After lunch at 1:30, we’d continue making progress for the rest of the day! We eventually decided on a direction with all 5 steps of the video, so it was an accomplishment to us! We presented what we had to the supervisor and he liked it! But Isaac, the director of the offices, had to see it for final say. He too liked where we were going, but according to him it was a bit in the wrong direction, that was mainly because there was no script to work with. There was supposed to be a script made, first. I totally understand the point he was making. Without a written script, It would be much harder to actually envision the proper visuals to tell our story. A bit heartbroken that we had to close our draft, Isaac mentioned it definitely would not be scrapped, as he also mentioned that anything we create we can use for content for future social media posts.

Here at Sacatelle, I’m a graphic design intern for the Marketing team. My role is specifically to illustration, using mostly Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I use these to create icons, tote bag concepts, and whatever else  the company can use for content to post on social media. Otherwise, I’d create posters for some of the tot bag designs.

I found the position on internships.com and applied to it and 5 others. This company was the first to respond and we set up an interview for the following Friday. On the day of the interview, I was sharply dressed and felt prepped and ready to go, even though it’s been a while since I’ve been on an interview. The interview was actually really easy! I was interviewed by two guys and they were both were actually pretty awesome, down-to-earth guys. We talked as if we were great friends, and even had a few laughs! Questions were standard, like “Who am I and what do I do?” and “What made me apply to Sacatelle?”. They liked me and my drawing skills immediately and they wanted me aboard, starting the following Monday.

What made me go with these guys was mainly the fun, lively, and friendly atmosphere I got from the office, of where I was interviewed, and I figure the sooner I land an internship, the better, since I’m enrolled in the internship course this semester.

Sacatelle LLC.

Sacatelle is a B2B (Business to Business) with the one true goal to revolutionize advertising by creating your company the perfect tote bag. They are a public company which helps design a brand new bag, or redesign a current one, for other companies. By using beautiful design options while closely discussing the company vision with the client, and using only  cheap yet high quality material, their job is to make your brand a walking billboard with practical use!

Awesome, right? So, you’re telling me if I owned a company, I could hire these guys to make a bag out of my poster girl, Ion?

AND, apparently. it’s budget friendly!? WHAT!?

The office is located in Manhattan, New York, West 38th street and 8th Ave, and they also have an office over at Los Angeles, California. It is divided by two spacious rooms, both with huge windows offering quite a view of the Manhattan streets, even though it’s only on the second floor. The larger room is where the Main Team works. This includes the bag designers, the sales reps, and marketing. The smaller room is where the Marketing Team works, which I’m a part of. I have two supervisors: The Marketing Team Supervisor and the Office Head. The size of both teams are roughly the same, each having around 10 members.