Elizabeth Boychalova's ePortfolio

This week for my internship, I tried my hand at mockups again. My director assigned me a project to create t-shirt and hoodie mockups using the company’s logo. I got the chance to practice using Adobe Photoshop some more, a program which I’m not totally comfortable using still. I noticed that I created these mockups faster than the mask, and I learned some new skills to make the final product more realistic utilizing layer modes and adjusting the levels of the photographs I used.

On the other hand, my job at the casino has also been going well. I was assigned a project to make some edits to a menu, and my senior commended me for my attention to detail. Additionally, I finished my employee recognition pins & certificate assignment, and I would say that I’m about 50% finished with my Design Bible.

For the Design Bible, I started adding annotations to my images to describe the guidelines for the designs for digital ads. My boss and coworkers actually didn’t have a lot of information on the context of the ads that they design, like where they go or how they look when they’re live, so I had to do a lot of personal research on the various ad sizes. I learned a lot about the top performing ad dimensions, about “ad inventory,” and now I can identify different ads based on their dimensions!

I also spent some time after my shift familiarizing myself with the property, noting the various screens that our promotions/designs appear on. It’s important to be able to contextualize the designs I’m going to be creating so that I’m able to design for the space better.

This week for my internship, I was tasked to create the cover for their May Newsletter, which came out fine. On the other hand, at the casino, I finished up with my compilation of the digital project/dimensions project I was working on. Now, my boss has assigned me a project to design Employee Recognition pins, LinkedIn posts, digitals and certificates. He gave me a few sketches to work from, and so far I’ve come up with about 10 pin designs.

These designs will not only be used for my casino’s location, but also three other locations, so each design is going to have a color change/variation to differentiate the different locations. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little nervous being given this much responsibility on my second week of working here, but it gives me something to do during the day.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m allowed to share my progress/designs, but I will attach the mask mockups from last week which I did not get to showcase on my blog.

Thus far, my internship has been moving along smoothly. My director gives me a decent amount of work. I was tasked with designing the layout for an article titled The Worker’s Dilemma. I wanted to create an article that mimicked more traditional news articles, and my director was happy with the results. Simultaneously, I have just started my job at the casino! I have spent the week shadowing my coworkers and developing an understanding of their of their workflow.

My job has multiple servers where they store all of their working files, completed jobs, and various assets for designing their projects. Additionally, they have a work log which is updated where they catalog all of their completed projects. I was able to work on a couple of sneaky jobs (my boss didn’t want me to start designing yet) that were fairly simple: one was just changing the price of a hotel package, and the other was to design a gambling disclaimer sticker. Both of my projects were approved!

Additionally, my boss has assigned me a project to compile all of the various digital projects that our department designs, as well as all of the various dimensions for those projects. He wants to create a design bible for the department, and I’m the one starting it. This experience has been pretty stressful to me, as I’m completely new to the company, but it’s also a good way for me to get acclimated with all of the different design jobs the department does. Plus, it’s a good way for me to get to know and collaborate with my coworkers!

Below I’ve added the design I created for my internship’s May Newsletter.

My internship gives me a lot of creative liberty with my designs, which I appreciate. I’m glad I get to apply my skills in InDesign somewhere, and I definitely feel myself improving as a designer. InDesign is not a program I’m used to using as much as Adobe Illustrator, and I’m also used to doing more illustrative work rather than designing layouts, but I’m having a good time with it and the feedback that my director has been nothing but positive thus far. Next week, I have to design and create mockups for facemasks with the company’s logo, which I am a bit anxious about as I’m not the best at mockups.

This time, I was asked to design an article for Asian American/Pacific Islander Heritage Month. I was looking at Canva, Pinterest and Behance for some design inspiration, and came up with this.

My internship with the non-profit organization has been going well so far. I was invited to a team on a messaging software called Rock. It’s similar to Slack, but Rock has some additional features, such as creating tasks with deadlines within the software itself. The software can then remind you of said deadlines.

My director provides me with weekly design assignments. Last week, I was asked to design an article layout titled Ukraine Crisis Relief: Best Charities for Donations. I get full creative freedom for the assignments, and in addition, my director provided me with a link to all of the company’s previous articles for inspiration.

Here is the final design I came up with for the article, done in Adobe InDesign.

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Hey there. I’m Elizabeth.

I’m an illustrator and graphic designer. My interests also lie in animation and web design. I’m most comfortable in using Adobe Illustrator for design and Clip Studio Paint for illustration. I’m also comfortable using Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, XD, Dreamweaver, Animate, and After Effects. I have been illustrating since I was in middle school, and only recently switched path to focus more on graphic design because I feel like a career in graphic design would feel more stable for me. 

Last month, I had an interview for a graphic design position at a casino and I got the job! At that job, I’ll be working with a team of 6 other people creating marketing material for the casino. Unfortunately, because it is a casino, the job requires I get a special gaming license which takes a minimum of 3 weeks to arrive. So, while I wait to receive my license, I started an internship at a non-profit organization where I will be receiving and creating various design projects on a weekly basis.

Here’s a link to my portfolio website:
https://boychalova.myportfolio.com/

Here’s my LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-boychalova-11b000220/