Jennifer's Internship Blog

This week I worked on a banner for the school’s International Students department that will replace the existing one. The lead designer handed off all the designs to me and asked that I animate it using edge animate. Lucky for me, I had just taken a course on edge animate this spring – so I knew exactly how I was going to approach this project. It took me one full day to animate it and another to polish up the animation times and flow.

Below is an example of one of the completed banners as a jpg. The only thing that’s left is for it to be posted on the school’s website. Once it is I’ll be sure to update this post with a link to the site.

EDIT: Here is a link to the completed project: http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/admissions/international/ 

Today I was assigned a new project – to design a poster for the list of students who received scholarships this school year. This is a very text heavy poster – so designing it was a bit of a challenge. I’m comfortable with Indesign, so I made sure to create paragraph and character styles when needed. Discerning the text hierarchy was the most important aspect of this project. I made sure to use different colors and font-weights where appropriate. Looking at it now I feel like I did a good job solving this problem.

For the header, I used the money gift box that is used on the school’s scholarship page and used similar colors for the text and background.

After all the styling was completed I felt that there was a missing aspect to the poster. I then talked with Prof. Vargas and we decided on adding bullet points to the headline text of each category. This helped reduce the monotony of the text. Below is the completed version of the project – it should be up in the school halls soon!

This week my goal was to complete the commencement page and upload it to the school’s website. Now that the bulk of the work was completed (the design work) it was time for me to begin coding. Since I am well-versed in both HTML and CSS, coding was a breeze. I added the header, buttons, and links – it all went smoothly until I hit the twitter widget. 

Styling the twitter widget wasn’t too difficult for me – the thing was that I had to work around all their default styling and override others with my own code using the “!important” css declaration. After looking through all my code and making sure it was clean and error free, I passed it along to the department’s webmaster. 

It was then uploaded and is now available for all Alums to see here: http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/alumni/commencement/

During one of my days at the Visual Communications office I ended up stepping away from my main project and worked on a print design for the 2015 Best of New York Awards Dinner. I was given the logo and text for the page with instructions to make it fit on a 5×7 cardstock paper.

After measuring the margins on the actual paper and setting up my illustrator file I began working on the design. After a few revisions, and a bit of copy-editing, I ended with a simple, yet formal design. 

One of my biggest challenges was finding appropriate fonts for the job that make to look and feel of the event. I was able to solve this by keeping my audience in mind and matching a relevant font family. From there I was able to narrow it down to work with the page.

The typical day here at the office of Visual Communications is always busy. There is a mix of cubicles and office spaces for each employee, and is dependent on your position. The attire is formal to business casual – I always try to dress formally to reflect the company culture. The typical employee day is Monday to Friday from 9am-5pm with an hour of lunch.

The photo below is of my current workspace. I’m required to bring my laptop in each day and sit in a cubicle. I like to have a sketchbook and notebook with me at all times so that I can work things out on paper first. I’m not too far from my supervisor and I’m free to visit him if I have any questions or concerns.

Since I am an intern I work 5 hours each, Monday to Thursday – I was also given the freedom to work after hours from home. I’ll be coding the website for city tech and it’s a lot easier for me to work things out through the night and show my progress the next day. That way we could go over the code and find solutions to any problems I’ve encountered.

So far things have worked out fairly well and I’ve made a lot of progress on the website. It’s interesting to see how my design is evolving and will soon be a live website.

My journey of acquiring my internship was a rocky but successful one.  I started by applying for several internships in April and May – I heard back from a few places, but they either flaked or did not begin until August. Desperate for a solution, I met with Professor Mason and, with his assistance, I was able to acquire an intern position with the Office of Visual Communications.

My supervisor is Professor Vargas – he has been extremely helpful and open to having me on board. I interviewed with him, after sending him a link to my online portfolio, and was hired on the spot. I was asked mainly about my experience and what I was looking to get out of my time there. We went over a few pieces in my portfolio and discussed how I would implement my skills on the job. I was grateful when he mentioned that I would be doing actual design work and not “going on coffee runs.”

I came in the next day, eager to being working on my assigned project, which is to redesign the commencement ceremony website. Below are sketches I work on for the page.

While I am a webdesigner, it is still important to always sketch things out. The adobe suite is a great tool, but it should not think for you. After a few edits this was the direction we decided to go:

This semester I was lucky enough to work with City Tech’s Visual communications office,  located at 16 Court St. This office is affiliated with The City University of New York, therefore it is considered a public company. This office is responsible for all City Tech’s printed and digital design ephemera. I’m working closely with those in charge of the school’s website and designed materials. 

Their client is the school itself and each of their respective departments. When asked, they accurately describe themselves as the school’s in-house design studio. There are no recent news articles but here is a link to the schools website: http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/

That website was hand coded by this office for the school. It uses a custom content management system (CMS), and links you to important information. They are also responsible for updating and creating all of its content. 

This second link is to the commencement ceremony page: http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/students/activities/commencement.aspx They have entrusted me with it’s redesign so that the recent alumni have a space to see all of their photos, videos, and have a way to keep in touch. This project will take up most of time with them, as I am both designing and coding it. All in all, I am grateful to have to opportunity to work with this department and am excited to see how I will grow.