Internship_FinalPresentation

On May 4th, we had James (Jimmy) Levin who is the founder of Job Search Therapy, guest speak in class. He is a professional career coach, who has set out to help people prepare them an interview for either an internship or a job opening, what to say and how to follow up with the company. For almost 30 years, he was a well known and established photographer who has had his work published in over 300 books and across many ad campaigns. His photography was aimed more towards lifestyle and children, which lead him to work with companies like Mattel and even ToysRUs. In 2007, he needed to have an eye surgery that resulted in him not being able to photograph like he had used to, so it pushed him to reinvent himself. He founded Job Search Therapy in order to use his knowledge of the business and the real world, to help place people with interviews at companies, where he felt their skills could grow. During his lecture, he spoke a lot about the interview process and how to make sure you stuck in the hiring manager’s mind; how to follow up afterwards with a thank you letter that really tied together the whole process. He spoke about researching the company and even people within the company, which would give you a higher advantage because you aren’t just going in their blind. This part of his lecture really stuck in my head since I will be graduating in a few weeks and I’ll be going through this soon enough. This lecture really gave me insight into how to prepare and land the job that you really want, so I will be using a lot of his notes and comments in the future.

My last week at my internship consisted of finalizing two projects that needed more than one revision. Overall, I really enjoyed my internship and glad I was able to make a connection like Josh Bendana. Although, Bovrbon is a small company, Josh has quite a few connections throughout the design industry, that I’ve been able to link with on LinkedIn. Since the beginning of my internship, I have been offered a freelance position with Bovrbon after I graduate, and when Josh finally opens his graphic design based office in Staten Island, I have to opportunity to be apart of that.

This weeks extra assignment was to create two menu mock-ups for a coffee bar/shop called El Jeffe that will be opening in Brooklyn soon. The mock-ups needed to be simple and consist of red and black colors throughout. The designs would be laid on either white off white cardstock, to give it a clean new look. I was limited to san-serif typefaces, but I had full range of whatever san-serif typefaces I wanted to use (as long as the licenses were in order), so this was a fun and creative project for me. Other than the menus, I continued with my weekly Instagram posts for both Crazy Clean and Bovrbon. Being able to work remotely, really came in handy these last few weeks, since I’ve been fighting a weird cold that just didn’t want to break. I was also glad that Josh was so understanding when two of my assignments were emailed to him a day later than their deadlines.

Time Inc was founded in 1922 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, who were both 23 years old at the time. In March of 1923, the first issue of Time was published and it was the first news magazine in the United States to have a new issue every week. In the magazines beginning, Henry Luce worked as the business manager and Briton Hadden worked as the editor-in-chief. With Briton Hadden’s sudden passing away in 1929, Henry became the company’s new editor-in-chief.

The business magazine Fortune  launched in 1930, Life launched in 1934, House & Home launched in 1952 and Sports Illustrated launched in 1954. By the middle of the 1960s, Time Inc was one of the most creditable magazine publishers in the world. In 2004, Time Inc with a partnership with Walmart, launched the magazine called All You. All you was “budget oriented” magazine with the main focus on coupons and “smart shopping” during difficult economic times. The magazine expanded by distributing to more companies like Barnes & Noble and Target in 2014. At this point in 2017, Time Inc has over a 100 iconic brands that are read by millions of people across the globe.

In 1989, Time Inc made a huge move by merging with Warner Communications, in order to form Time Warner. To move into the new digital age, Time Inc launched a web based membership service called Maghound, which displayed roughly 300 magazines from Times Inc, as well as other publishers.

Between 2008 and 2009, due to the recession, all magazines advertising took a huge hit and lead to a dramatic drop in revenue. In 2013, Time magazine alone sold only 44% of their ad pages that they had sold in 2000.

In 2010, Time Inc partnered with ABP Group to launch the Fortune India magazine and the yearly Fortune India 500 list. In 2013, Time Inc purchased Departures, Black Ink, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure and a few more titles from American Express. Time Inc’s many magazine titles cover a large range of issues and topics from food, financial information, women’s issues, travel, news and so many more.

In 2014, Time Inc made some huge changes that broke their usual traditions. They planned the layoff of 500 employees and in 2015, the company decided to move its offices from their iconic New York City location in the Time-Life building. In addition to this move, Time Inc decided to do something that no other magazine publishers had done, which was putting small ads on the covers of their magazines. In order to continue developing itself into the digital age, Time Inc sought out more partnerships by purchasing the Seattle tech startup Cozi and together they launched their first Roku channel.

As of the end of 2016, Time Inc is at the top of the Top 12 US Consumer magazines with  the top revenue by publisher and the top revenue by magazine. Time Inc publishes millions of copies of its magazines every year and with their digital advances, it won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

Along with my assignments this week, Josh and I spoke about a business that I’m looking to start. I create these books that are great for gifts for almost any occasion, where you can ad signatures or pictures, etc. I initially emailed Josh about his thoughts on Etsy and sites like that, since that’s where I was looking to set up shop. We discussed how Bovrbon’s web designers could create an actual website for my business and how we could figure out payments. This business is still in the works, but I’m glad I have Bovrbon as a backing, while I figure out how I want to proceed and what not. I’m very grateful for this internship and the opportunities that it’s allowing me to utilize, given that I’ve done good work up until this point in order to receive these opportunities.

In my fourth week of my internship, Josh decided to see how I could multitask and time manage, by giving me six assignments at once. Three of the six assignments, were the Instagram posts for Crazy Clean and Bovrbon, and the new Facebook banner for a free mailer. Those assignments were easily knocked out. The fourth assignment was to come up with six logo designs for a fencing company in Staten Island, who just so happened to be one of my dad’s close friends and one of his oldest clients. I found it really funny, how small Staten Island is and how everyone seems to know everyone else. The fifth assignment, was to create eight business card designs for Bovrbon, that incorporated the new logo and some basic information on the back of the card. Josh wanted me to try out different wood looks, the logo is black or white and whatever other variations I could come up with. I ended up creating a few that Josh loved and he decided on one to be the new business card for the company because it was simple, sleek and he loved the white space I used. The last assignment was to learn two glitch effects, one that was based in Photoshop and the other in illustrator. It was cool to learn the two effects from YouTube, since I had never learned them before and they’re definitely a skill I will use in future projects, if I can.

Weeks two and three consisted of several projects, from the paving company logos to creating Instagram posts for both Crazy Clean and for Bovrbon. The paving company logos that I created were immediately sent to the client and within two days, they picked the one that they like best. The logo is live and can be find at www.paversexpress.com, where they even implemented the colors I used in the logo I created, throughout the rest of the website. I will say it is pretty exciting to see the first logo I created for this assignment (and my personal favorite), being used by an actual company on a website that is visited daily. As for the Crazy Clean and Bovrbon Instagram posts, I used stock photos from pixabay.com and pexels.com that I overlayed with some text and the respective company’s logo. Weekly I was to create four Instagram posts for Crazy Clean and six posts for Bovrbon, which were pretty easy for me to do. Later in week three, Josh added an additional assignment, which was to create a banner that would be placed in the cover photo part of the Bovrbon’s Facebook page, that would change weekly. The assignment for week three, was to create a banner that stated along the lines of, (top line) “Like Us on Facebook and Be One of Three Winners to Win a New Business Card Created By Us” and (bottom line)  “Free of Charge”. The banner needed to consist of a background that fit in with the text and what the company was offering. I enjoyed these assignments since I was able to explore new sites (pixabay.com and pexels.com) that I had never used before.

The tool of the trade that was chosen for me to research was Online Screen Sharing websites. Join.me is one of these “online screen sharing” sites, which we had used when we presented remotely for class on March 9th. We created a username and were able to get a code to send to the professor (or up to ten people) in order for us to connect on the site. After connecting on the site with the code, we were able to present our presentations from our own computers, while he was able to see it from his. This was possible with the free version of the site, but with the paid version can do a lot more. With the paid version, you can host more people and you can even transfer your screen to other participants computers so they can present from their own computers, but still use the same presentation.

Other “online screen sharing” sites that I found in my research, besides Appear.in which was provided to me by the professor; were GotoMeeting, ScreenLeap, FreeConference, MingleView, Spreed, FreeScreenSharing and Google+ Hangouts. Although there are many other “online screen sharing sites”, I decided to just share these since I was able to get information about each of these from one site. All of these sites require you to create a username and password, but none off hand ask for any type of payment. All of the sites that I mentioned before have free trials (usually up to 30 days), but you can always upgrade for a fee and be able to do more within the sites. Each site allows to you to connect to more than one person at a time, but only if you upgrade can you connect to even more people. With upgrades you can share your screen with others, like with join.me, which allows them to present from their own computers and access the presentation.

“Online screen sharing” sites are good tools in the designing industry because it means that you can connect with clients and people of your team, even if you aren’t face to face with each other. Being able to do this would allow any critiques or changes to be done almost immediately since you are not traveling to and from the meeting.

I personally think this is a good tool to use in business, as a designer and in life itself. I’ve honestly suggested this to my internship supervisor and we have used join.me on two occasions now, which is a lot more helpful than emails, since I mainly work remotely for my internship. I would suggest more businesses and people use this tool because it makes the tediousness of meetings so much easier.

Last week I got hired as an intern to work at Bovrbon, which is a creative digital agency that is located in Chelsea, in New York City. It really helps to have connections in this field, since I was running out of time to find my internship and I needed to take the class in order to graduate. The owner of Bovrbon, happened to be looking for an intern and is a good friend, of a good friend of my dads. I did not have a formal interview, but since my resume and portfolio were well put together and uniform, pushed my supervisor to hire me, over the other applicants he had gotten in the past few weeks.

On March 9th, I met up with my supervisor (Josh Bendana) at a temporary office in Staten Island, since that is where we both live and he wasn’t planning on going to the office that day unless there was an emergency. Bovrbon is a small company with only seven or eight employees, who work remotely a lot of the time. We sat in the office for two hours, getting to know each other and to discuss the work in portfolio in depth. I received the greatest news, that I was able to work remotely and we would do our meetings via email or phone call; and we would only meet at the office if it were necessary to collaborate with other team members. I was able to meet one of Bovrbons newer clients, since they rented an office in the same building where we were having our meeting. After the quit meeting with the client, Josh informed me that I would be taking over Crazy Cleans Instagram page since the previous designer (not through Bovrbon), didn’t really have a clue what he was doing. Towards the end of the meeting, I received my first assignment, which was to design four prospective logos for a paver company that was located in New Jersey. I had four days for the designs, he asked if I had any other questions and that was the end of the meeting.

I’m excited for this internship, since I’m hoping to learn new skills and to show how the skills I’ve already obtained, can hopefully land me a job with this company when I graduate.