Author Archives: David

My internship Part 6

Lastly, I just wanted to say I learned alot im my time at Women’s Press Collective. I learned how to talk to all sorts of people and sell them on the idea behind our organization. I also helped contribute to a magazine with my Indesign skills, and thanks to working with others on this project I learned more utilities and shortcuts for all the different programs I currently use. Another thing I learned is Perspective, and how different people look for different thins in a design and my job is to keep up with these suggestions. The environment may have been lax but  I still feel like I learned alot here.

My internship part 5

On top of design we also worked on a variety of other ventures in order to make a worthwhile contribution to the organization. One of the more busy and lengthy jobs involve the mail-out of the magazine made by the organization, known as Collective Endeavor. This involves updating forms pertaining to the people we’re sending them too. You know, between my closing night job and working in this location, I’m realizing that any business or service, non-profit or not, requires alot of organization and paperwork, but it’s quite important to have a record of all this stuff. Having records like these are usually good for and future mishaps. I have worked with so many people and have learned much from the experience, so I’d say I’ve had a fruitful endeavor in my time here. And I feel i’m not done learning.

My internship part 4

JM Funeral Program

One of the responsibilities as an intern at Women’s Press Collective was to help teach other members learn the tools of the trade to design. I have had a few opportunities to partake in showing others the ropes. However I had a real honor in meeting one of the founding members of Women’s Press Collective. Her name was Diana and she was quite wise, kind and just my luck, a fellow designer. However she was a designer from the days before computers we’re something of a go-to device for design( or at least many young designers). So my task was to help her accomplish her design task while teaching her the basics of the program she using. The goal, make a funeral for someone who is not dead but after a recent stroke for an extremely… seasoned gentleman it’s a nice just in case. The program was InDesign. We actually managed to make a lot of progress in our first meeting and she learned a whole lot. She had alot of old photos, so we did alot of text-wrapping and we focused alot on placement. Overall it was a pretty good experience and I also managed to learn general design tips from Diana, so it was a win-win.

My internship part 3

David-flyer3

This is a project I’m currently working on for Women’s Press Collective. For our canvassing activity, we relied on an old flyer with outdated information. It was time for a facelift. This Flyer is aiming for a slightly more simplified look. It has a beige color and thick black lines to push for a classic newspaper feel. I chose to go for this design since in this day and age old is new again. The younger generation is interested in vintage elements, like vinyl. It’s still a work in progress but it seems to have a good reception.

My Internship part 2

Reggae Rock Cover

During my stay at women’s press collective I managed to have a hand in a few design projects. One project that took my attention was a joint venture with two other designers and one the members of the organization. specifically I worked with a young woman named Melissa and two other students that attend city tech, Guilia and Elijah. The project was based around a magazine that highlight the art and passions of the modern day youth. We used InDesign to make the magazine happen. It’s still a work in progress, but we managed to get over 50 pages. I came later in the year so my contributions were towards the latter half of the magazine. We re-sized images,  structured type around to make it flow, played around with a few design choices and so on and so forth. The magazine is not finished but much progress has been made. It is thankfully almost complete, and I look forward to the final product.

My internship, part1

I attended an internship at the Women’s Press Collective, A volunteer organization that specializes in creating alternative print to provide more news concerning the community and the working class people. I myself have served many roles in my short time, with my responsibilities changing on a near day-by-day basis. I have gone canvassing to the immediate of the Bronx near Kingsbridge to try and recruit new members, obtain essentials and generally spread our message. We have a pitch that helps us with getting the basic information to the public in a quick and precise manner, though we may improvise when the need arises. I was actually tasked with the translation of the preexisting pitch, which helped me improve my Spanish and it’s something I collaborated on with my classmate Giulia. However I also got a chance to work on some design tasks

Welcome!

Focal pointLine From david

David Tejada                                                                                      Design and Color I

 

Graphic principles Experience

Design and Color is the kind of class that set the foundation for visual perception, getting the basics of what one wants their audience to see. A design is to tell a story without words, being able to create life with and without color, and make a humble piece demand attention. That is what I expected, or at the very least to learn how simple mechanisms and shapes could help design more ambitious projects, like architecture or motion picture. Of course, I ended up getting something different, and I feel conflicted on whether this difference on what I thought this class would be and what it actually is, is a minor difference or a major one from time to time. When I entered this class, I was surprised that the primary focus was drawing the perfect square. At first this seemed rather strange but I humored it, since it fell with my ideal that grand designs start with small foundations. A small square could always lead to something bigger. Of course, I learned a thing a thing or two prior to commencing my square.

The Professor likened these squares to perspective in advertising. I learned about proper placement, and how to catch my audiences attention by relying on a subtle type of environment, something that gets right to the point of the product in question. It is with this that I found that drawing a square is easy, but a drawing the perfect square requires practice and has its own blueprint for success. So I handed in my square the best that I could, and we moved on to broader subject, such as 3D, Pattern and Rhythm. In the long run the shape that the majority of the class, myself included, relied upon was… the square. The square turned from a menial objective into a trump card as it was the one that allowed the most practice. And it helped us understand when the professor kept emphasizing that she does not do “Too Literal.”

For example, We were tasked throughout this semester to tackle squares and circles in different perspectives, such as 3D. But we didn’t want to just give 3d square or a cube, that’s too blatant and it wasn’t the style that would fit for the goal as a class. No, we wanted to capture our shape in the beginning of its transition, where it can give the perspective of 3D without being “In your face” about it. and of course, this initiative extended into other projects such as rhythm and pattern. We wanted to focus on the commencing of the shapes working in harmony with our ideas, and so it may just look like squares to the untrained eye, but it is a statement to artists with a true grasp on what art truly is.

Of course, time went on and many students have made great stride in perfecting their shapes, with factors such draughtsmanship and margins. Our measurement skills increased, so much so that many were able to tell if a shape was misplaced by even a 32nd of an inch. We made progress without even realizing it. With so much practice on the black squares, we had shifted, though not without struggle for some more than others, into the format of using designer gouache. We finally entered the phase of personal design.

This is it. Our chance to show our true colors through our own narrative. We each had to make our own take on going green, being tested on making a story with the principal of Bauhaus (Less is more), and overall making a design that will immediately understand without inconveniencing the mind in any way, shape or form. A clashing of great ideas are in the works and one can feel the strive for perfection in the air. Was this what we were waiting for?

And so, with many months of training, it has dawned on me the revelation of the purpose of this class. It is to provide us, the students, with mental preparation for the bare necessities of what makes good design. And so, while I may not have made any grand imaginative designs, I learned exactly what I need to make them. And I believe that that is what this class is about.