Last week we were in the pre stages of concept developement here at Brick & Portal for our ad campaign. This week I was tasked with rolling out concepts and rough drafts based on the ideas we came up with. After meticulously vetting roughs, a cohesive concept was decided upon and I was given the task of creating the week 4 ads which are animations. I am looking forward to this because I have been interested in working on motion graphics for a while. I had animation assignment before here, but they all fell through due to time constraints and creative differences with the higher ups. Hopefully this one makes it through!
Author Archives: James Lugo
Internship Blog 4
This week I have been paying more attention to how social networking tools have an impact on my internship. I have noticed that working for a small startup that deals with fashion technology, social media plays a huge part of outreach and gaining your audience. My boss is constantly on Hootsuite checking out the analytics of how the company’s tweets are performing day to day. She has the social media team schedule posts and she monitors them to see how much of an impact it has and adjusts on how they can be improved to get the target numbers of retweets and new followers. We are getting ready to launch a 5 week ad campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and twitter, so making sure each ad is appropriate for each platform is key to its success. We are coming up with taglines, headlines, and deliverables this week and next week to prepare for concepts.
James Levine Presentation
Mr. Levine gave a great presentation on how to go about presenting ourselves and making the most of our job search. I noticed that I am expanding my job search too wide and I need to start focusing on what I really want to do and head in that direction. He spoke about finding a connection between job descriptions and making sure that they align with what is on your resume or there will be a disconnect and employers will overlook you. I also took away the importance of a cover letter. Levine said that your cover letter should describe you and your personality but to keep it formal. Let your resume tell your skills and your cover letter tell your character.
Another important point I took away was about interviews and how it must be a dialogue, not a monologue. Research the company enough to make good conversation and to ask relevant questions on your potential position and day to day tasks. It is always good to have a better understanding of what you will be doing so you can expect.
Hearst Publications Tour
Seeing as how I have a high interest in working in print specifically for magazines, it was such a treat to get to see the inner workings of Hearst. Now before I get into all the awesome things I learned, I will say that I had a completely different take on how things were ran. The way professors make it seem is that you have to do everything in a company like Hearst when in reality, each aspect of the design process is worked on by different departments.
If I wanted to work on only retouching images to ensure they look the best on a page, there is a job just for that. If I cared about how the each issue looked on every page and had to work on doing its layout, there was a job for just for that as well. There is even a job just to make sure that the advertisement companies send their files correctly in the proper formats. The point is, it is great to be able to do it all, but you can pick what you are good at, what you love, and wake up every morning doing just that. Some people get a kick at retouching photos and others can find their calling making sure the printer works properly for the hundreds of millions of magazines your company is about to print.
That is my takeaway from the Hearst visit. Before, I was just looking at print as a whole thinking I would be physically making every page and every correction, but in reality I would be a part of a bigger team ensuring that my specific role in the process was completed. This has been really helpful in how I will be applying myself in my future job searches.
Internship Blog Week 6
This has been a rough two weeks at Brick & Portal. Since the app has launched, I have been trying to promote the app as much as I can and be the best brand ambassador I could. Along with that, I have been working on the advertising ads for the 4th week of the launch campaign ( I believe it is a 5 or 6 week campaign) which are GIFs. The idea for week 4 is to animate the create a look button, so I was given a vague concept of what my boss had in mind and was given complete control over how to go about creating the animation. After a few rough animations, I decided to use droplets of color to fill in the space and bring color to the image and the selected outfits since each GIF was focused on a look theme; #Workout, #Casual and #DateNight. For each ad I had to make a version for Facebook and another for Instagram.
After completing the ads at the beginning of the week, the other half of the company, Digital Design NYC, has been in full swing with new clients so the other half of my work this week has been gathering competitor features for a client and compile a document of different competitors and how they differ from the client’s app and how they are similar. We have mostly been creating things for Mac and Apple iOS’ but this new client will be the first to be developed on android. I have been given the task to create a document to explain how android and apple systems differ from one another from functionality to UI. It just goes to show how you can hold many different positions at a startup internship. Last week I was an animator and this week I am apart of research and development but it’s ok because it keeps things fun and you learn a lot more. At the same time however, since it is a start up and the structure is loose, you kind of miss out on seeing how a more developed design company runs.
Social Networking Tools (Week 5 Blog)
After much research into Social Networking sites and tools, there are plenty of resources that you can use as a student and as a professional to elevate the way you market yourself and a business. Depending on your needs, there are plenty of sites you can use to get your brand out there. For personal interactions with companies and people who influence you, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great ways to keep in touch with other professionals and see what they are doing. There is also Youtube and Snapchat if you’d rather watch a video presentation or tutorial. You can even create your own and have vlogs or mini sneak peeks into what you are currently working on.
For businesses there are other tools you can utilize to create social media ads that will automatically post and keep track of your analytics. Some tools let you mass upload your posts with Bulk Buffer, schedule tweets with Hootsuite, better organize your analytics with Quill, and give a creative touch to your blogs with Canva. This is just a short list of the options available to you out there in the marketing world. Get out there and try some out!
Internship Blog Post Week 3
Unfortunately I missed Zach’s presentation but I did go over the deck he had. From what I can analyze from the deck and notes I received from a classmate, his presentation was very informative. It seems the whole process is mostly about branding yourself in order to stand out from other designers. His whole powerpoint was branded and was a representation of himself and how he wants to be viewed by future employers. Zach’s resume was clean and had just the right amount of color. I can find ways to adjust and improve my own resume and cover letter just by analyzing the presentation.
Internship Blog Post Week 2
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I am interning at a start up called Brick & Portal. I call it a fashion tech start up that is creating a social shopping app. It is a very small group of interns working hard to meet our deadlines. When I first started, I was extremely nervous. I did not want to fail being this was my first real design internship. Thankfully my bosses are all extremely nice and helpful. I work directly with the lead designer, CEO and Co Founder who all have design backgrounds in different areas. I am learning something new every time I am there and cannot wait to see the launch of the app we all have been working hard to complete!
