Sixth day of training.
Today we were working on how to layout our flyers to print, during that time I have learned a lot of short cut keys, and different techniques to center and to align every thing on the page.
Later on we have worked on our group project because our canvas is a wall. I learned that it is better to measure out how big our art board would be and plan everything from there.
Today I have time to finish up the flyer and to fix the previous projects. I was told we need to put together a presentation for the two projects and the group project for the last day of training. And we still have a group project that we need to work on as well, I was a little worry about the time I have left to put together every time.
During the group project, Phil and I only have one concept to present because we just really like our posted note concept and believe it will work for the brand and the target audience. But in an ideal world it is the best to show up with more then one concept just in case the client does not like our first choice.
After we decided the concept for the project, we all worked well and ask each other for advices and have some pretty good back and forth feedback on the project.
Fifth day of training.
Today we worked on our flyer for “Welcome New Faculty.” I learned that printing things out before officially saying I am done, helps a lot. Printing it out allows me to see how it will looked on paper, I got to see if anything is eligible, too big, too, small, too light, or too dark.
On the fifth day of training, Phil and I came in separately to work on our Welcome New Faculty flyer. I have a different way I want to design this flyer because I feel it would be more effective if the flyer is in a different shape and I want to break out of the pattern of using seasonal theme and illustration design for the flyer, and use image to communicate Faculty.
I face challenge in finding the right pictures that convey Faculty and after I find the image that work, I face the challenge in making the text work with the image and rearrange the copy on the flyer. The team and I had a great discussion on the image choices, the text, and the new shape of the flyer. All their opinions really help put together this flyer for Welcoming New Faculty.
Today is the fourth day of training.
We finished up our deliverables this morning. During the time I have spoke with my peers for some feed back about my business cards and changed some things around to finalize my work. I have also learned some more technique to use while using adobe illustrator.
Our next project is a group project and it was to design a wall instillation about defining what Faculty Commons is. So far Natalie and I had discussed some ideas that may work but for now just bouncing ideas of each other.
Today is the fourth day of training, this morning we wrapped up the “Choose your hood” project, and while we are finalizing the design, Phil and I helped each other on color decisions and some technical problems as well. My challenge of the day is choosing the colors for all the houses I illustrated for my poster, making sure the colors work together and it keep everything in the right attitude and mood.
Afterward we have a meeting about clients relation, working with printer and the steps in working on a project. It was very useful and I was comfortable to ask questions of any possible situation and how to be prepare. Especially about the dress code as well, I’m not familiar about how to dress in office and how to dress when meeting with a clients. As a designer I alway thought your outfit can express your personality and it would be appropriate for a designer office as well.
Today is the third day of training.
Through out the whole day we worked on our deliverables. I chose to recreate a business card for a cafe/shopping store, called Saturdays Surf NYC located in Soho. It is basically a store that sells handmade high quality clothing, that also sells surf boards and coffee. I have went to the actual store yesterday to get a feel of the environment for me to get some ideas.
So I have came up with some sketches with a sense of making it look fun. The most interesting aspect of this shop is that it sells surfing related things other than coffee because in New York there are not many surfing stores around. So for the business card I try to incorporate elements of coffee and surfing.
It turned out that I was focusing too much on the card it self than figuring out how the logo would be. Therefore I found a different font by looking at dafont.com and fontsquirrel.com and tried to created the business cards digitally on illustrator. I have also discussed with Natalie for critics on the cards that I have created.
We later on talked about the different resources that we can use for inspiration or tutorials that may be helpful to us later on.
Today is the third day of training, we have a lot of time to work on the “Choose Your Hood” element project. I sat down and just draw on illustration for my design and I managed to complete the basic outline and text for my design. And I got some advice from Mandy on how to stylize the typography and it is looking really good now. I’m really excited for the final outcome of it!
Beside working on my project, I tried my best to help Phil to decide the style for his project as well. I showed him work that I think it will help him bring together his project.
During the training, I learned more about how to use online sources to build my skill set, it is very useful because you can only learn so much from the classroom and it never hurt to learn more about the software.
So, today was the second day of training!
The first thing we did was continue with the Earth Day poster that I had started yesterday and finalize it. There were awkward moments when there were certain text or saying that didn’t really make sense or didn’t go along with the overall meaning of the poster, due to how it was given. The hard part was the the small amount of time given to work on this project.
The second thing we did was emailing etiquettes, we had to learn how to write an email to clients that we will be working with in the future. We practiced by writing to Professor Jordan, William, and to Arianna. We had to introduce ourselves, explain what were were doing, how we came with the concept of the Earth Day poster, and attach the pdf file of the poster we had did.
The third thing we did was the “Choose your hood” project, where we have to chose a location, a event or store (fiction or non fictional) and to design a deliverable of my choice.
On the second day of the training we learn about email etiquette and wrote an email to Professor Jordan regarding the redesign poster project. Before this exercise I always try to write as professional as I can when I write or response to email, but it is not always prefect. From this exercise I learned that it is important to keep email precise and not to repeat any unnecessary details. As a team William and Arianna helped me a lot on how to write appropriately.
On the feedbacks on my first poster design, I received many useful suggestions such as making sure the text is readable, the overall composition of the poster and finding good balance between the text and the illustration. Although it is good to make the text and illustration have some interaction, but in my case for the Earth Day poster, the text and the illustration need to have their own space in order for the composition to work and not to feel crowded.
I started to brainstorm for the second project, Choose Your Hood. I got some great idea for that and really excited to finalize it.
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