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!

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.

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.

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.

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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!