At my internship I get to work with my supervisor helping with her projects. I consider her my mentor. When there I get to see how she works and pick up on what she does. She also provides me with advice when she reviews my work on how to improve it. Since I have started working there I think I’ve gotten better with managing type. When I first started the projects were not as easy for me because I have not worked with large amounts of text often, and she could see that from my online portfolio. I was able to get used to working with text because of the menu boards, and her showing me how to use tabs again was a great help.

 A foldable menu project I was given and able to complete without any edits needed

She has told me herself that my designs are much better and neater than when I started and I am grateful for her receiving me as her intern and for the experience I have gained because of her. I will retain what I have learned and it will go towards me honing my skills as a graphic designer.

One of the projects I feel that I did well on was the redesign of the Queen Plaza Menu Boards for the tozt café. On that project I was able to work more quickly and efficiently because of the experience I gained form the previous projects. Using the 23^rd street menu board project as a reference I was able to recreate the menus to fit the new style that the restaurant was looking for. I organized the text and gave each menu board a consistent look.

My layout for the board along with text placement was far better than what I could have done when I first started. The changes done to my completed exported idmls were minor rather than more drastic like with earlier projects. I would give myself a nine out of ten on this project.

This week I finished up the redesigns for the tozt café menu boards. My supervisor showed me the original boards and the look she wanted the new ones to have and I designed them to be consistent with the new design direction. The body copy used for the boards is the book variation of my favorite font face Futura. After I completed the boards my supervisor applied a new color scheme to them from their new logo.

http://www.tostcafe.com/Welcome.tpl

some examples of the old and new boards

I was also given menu boards to do for a Europan café. We redesigned the boards to have a chalkboard look to them and kept the size of the olds ones. I got use leaders in these boards, which were removed from the redesign for the tozt boards.

My supervisor recently became the president of a community theater and has been working on flyer, shirt, and fan designs to advertising their upcoming show, Seussical the Musical. I did some work on the fan the first week I started but much of it has changed since then. I will be designing business cards for the shows soon.

Most of the projects I work on at my internship are collaborative. My supervisor would give me instructions on what to do and the dimensions I have to work with. One of the first projects I worked on was a breakfast menu board. I had a lot of text to work with and knew that tabs would help but I had forgotten how to use them so I ended up setting the document up with multiple text boxes. I also had line strokes instead of leaders to prices that were also in their own box.

It was embarrassing to have her see the file the way it was with all the boxes and have her ask why I set it up that way. It was a good leaning experience though as she told me it was alright and came to the computer I was using to show me how to use the tabs to make a cleaner and more organized document.

I learned that I shouldn’t be worried about speaking up if there’s something I don’t know or don’t remember how to do because I am learning and she was helping me to better myself. After being shown how to properly use tabs again I was able to fix the multiple box and leader issues. Things were unsuccessful at the start of the project because I didn’t communicate the problems I was having, because I was afraid of what my supervisor would say. After receiving her help the project was successful and I haven’t had a problem with aligning text after it.

This week my supervisor gave me a couple things to work on myself. The first was two menu boards, one was for salads and the other had three items, which were quesadillas, wraps, and burritos.

The second thing I worked on was simple, it was a business card for a hair salon. I just used a design she did for an awning as a reference to keep the look consistent with the business.

I also finished the designs for the posters for the Cuban restaurant I mentioned in an earlier post. The client chose the layout that had the poster divide into four rectangles. She also sent the rest of the pictures that were needed. My supervisor has told me that I’ve gotten much better and that my work is very neat now in how they are laid out and the spacing used.

The typical workday is receiving projects to work on for her restaurant clients. I work on the files and save it to my dropbox folder that my supervisor then views on her computer and offers suggestions and edits to be made if they are needed. After that my supervisor would speak to the client for approval of the designs.

ID Card

Stickers

One of the projects i worked on for a cafe 

With regard to the Graphic Design Industry I am learning how important communication is between you and your clients. My supervisor has to speak to many people a day receiving requests and making sure that the work she does is what they desire before she goes into the final steps of production. Making a mistake and having to reprint a project would be a waste of time and money so it is crucial for you and your client to be on the same page. I also learned that it is important to set up your files that are being worked on between yourself and another person easy to work with incase they need to make edits.

The environment in the workplace of my internship is very relaxed. I was very nervous the first day I started because I wasn’t really sure about what to expect, but after meeting my supervisor in person I was put at ease. The attire at the company is informal. The first day of my internship I didn’t want to take any chances since I didn’t know how anyone else would be dressed so I dressed formally. Now I dress informally but I don’t wear any graphic t-shirts.

My workspace is a small office with three computers in which I work with my supervisor, and another intern. My personal workstation is desk with a compute chair and a computer running windows 8.1. It has the adobe suite and I keep my work in a drop box folder that my supervisor created for me that is synced into her work files so that the work I do and the work she does is accessible between us.

The hours that I work at her office are 10:00 am to 2:00 or 3:00pm Monday-Wednesday. On Thursdays and Fridays I work from 9:00am to 12:00pm.

I received my internship position by sending an email to my current supervisor Marla. I applied for several positions but her company was the first I applied to because of my professor’s suggestion. I wrote a cover letter in the email I sent, and I attached a pdf of my resume and a link to my online portfolio. I received a reply from her later that day and she requested that I call her the next day. I did not have an in-person interview, but I did call her that following day and she described to me what she did and the type of work I would do if I interned for her. She then offered me the job of being her intern and I accepted, and gave her the days I would be available.

Some of the projects in my online portfolio that my supervisor viewed after receiving my email. 

My role in the company is to help my supervisor work on projects that she as hired for by her clients. Some of the work I do includes creating new designs for menus, menu boards, and posters, Sometimes the client wants the old look of the material with updated text information like new items or price changes.

Some concepts I worked on for a poster promoting new salads added to the restaurant’s menu.

The company I work for Is Calling All Graphics. The company is a private one and it was founded in January 2000. It only has one location and it is located at 196 Bay 8^th Street. My supervisor is the one employee of the company and she is its president. The primary business of Calling All Graphics is Graphic design and printing. The company’s clients are primarily restaurants. Other customers of the company include auto schools, accountants, and hair salons. The materials that are worked on by the company are menus and menu boards for restaurants, post cards, logo designs, brochures, business cards and other marketing material.

The department I work in is the graphic department. Most of the projects that I work on are menu boards for restaurants using Adobe InDesign. Like most things on screen I forget about the actual size because of how small it is on the monitor. When I look at the reference for what is being changed I’m reminded of the actual size of the boards, and they are large. I have to keep in mind to make fonts as large as possible within the space I’m working with and I have to keep things symmetrical.