Julian Townsend-Taylor's ePortfolio

It crazy how fast time can pass, it is almost like I was just struggling looking for an internship and now it is all coming to an end. I throughly enjoyed my time working at the internship even though it was remote. It was a little disappointing because of my schedule that I wasn’t able to check out the boxing gym in Brooklyn to meet new people, feel the culture of the gym, witness professional boxers train and/or probably do little training there as well (I used to do boxing and karate). Hopefully in the near future when my schedule clears up, I would be able to visit them and continue to build relationships and create new one with people there that isn’t through email, phone calls or zoom. In terms of my work, i can say I am proud of myself with the designs I created for them especially when there would be a minimal about of resources sent to me at times. It was also refreshing to know that I had design freedom on most of the projects that were given to me. I do feel like if I was able to solely work on the internship projects instead of having addition responsibilities such as a full-time job and being a college student, I would be able to produce better work. I also felt like my communication towards my supervisor could have been a little better, even though he understood my situation I still felt like that an area I could have improve upon. Overall, I am happy how my design came out, the experience I gain from this internship and creating a new look and creative feel to the organization with my design.

COMD4900 – Internship Presentation.pdf

 

 

Although my time working at the Internship was remote and I wasn’t able to do interactive collaboration work with a team, my supervisor was to get me to work along side the gym to promote a boxing event that in being held there in the summer. I was sent all the information that would be placed on the design along with a few high quality photos of the boxing trainers and students to choose from. Even though there wasn’t much back and forth conversation being held they were direct with all the information they need and they gave me design freedom to work on this assignment. Although they gave me freedom i didn’t want stray to far from how they represented themselves on their website, I  wanted to be consistent. I also used a group photo they sent to represent unity to convey that this isn’t just a boxing tournament but these people treat each other like family.

 

Working at this internship gives me a chance to improve and refine my photoshop skills, along with being able to learn new techniques and styles to apply to my designs. One thing I have learned from working here so far is how to improve the resolution of lower quality photos or to improve the quality of the photos the best of my ability if changing the resolution of the photo doesn’t work. When I’m designing a post that highlights my supervisor career, they tend to be older/lower quality photos due to him boxing in the late 90s and early 2000s. Having to consistently use Camera filter in photoshop and playing with the blending modes, highlights, hues/saturations and shadows allows me to improve the quality of some photos, sometimes it doesn’t work out the way I wanted it to be but you have to work with the best on you have sometimes. Being able to improve the photo quality and to enhance photos is a necessary tool that I will be able to use in the sports design field. Although the photos from a sports team or organization would be higher quality photos, I do need to know how to enhance such photos and how DPI works whether is for print or graphics. DPI (dot per inch) is the measurement for how many dots can be placed in the span of an inch in the image. 300 DPI is the best resolution a picture can be but that doesn’t mean a photo in 300 DPI can’t be bad quality. Those type of pictures usually come out grainy but if it for the web you may be able to fix it the best you can but if it’s for print, photos like that would have to be trashed.  

Chinese Translation – Improvement Entry.pdf

Always Room For Improvement.pdf

Translation and audio generated by software

 

Throughout my time at the internship, I have been working remote but I’ve been in consistent communication with my supervisor’s assistant. His communication is on point and consistent, he is always available to talk, whether it’s to discuss about the current project or any future projects. He is always encouraging me to give him any ideas that would gain more awareness for either my supervisor or the gym. He makes sure that even though I’m an intern, that my ideas are still appreciated and important. This type of attitude is shown all throughout the organization and having this type of attitude is how they make their clients feel welcomed and a part of the team, it the type of model they follow. But when I am working on a social media project, they will email me the pictures to use for each project. I typically start out sketching before I start designing on the computer. Each project I would have to email my supervisor’s assistant 3 drafts of the project, then he will send them to my supervisor for them to discuss which one would be the one to finalize. I would then make any changes they have to make sure the design perfect for their social media platforms.  

Selecting an internship can be difficult, you always want an internship that will help you gain experience to achieve the future role you want throughout your career path. As I said previously when I saw the internship to be a designer for a former boxing champion, I thought it was perfect, the first thing I said to myself was “This will be my opportunity to get my foot in the door when it comes to sports design”. I always had a passion for sports therefore I create basketball content using NBA players to create designs but having materials in my portfolio for a former boxing champion will definitely make it more enticing. When I had the phone interview with my supervisor assistant it was very smooth, straight to the point and informative especially because they were impressed with the portfolio that I sent to them. They informed me what my role would be, which is to create compelling social media designs (mostly on Instagram and Facebook) that supports my supervisor boxing career, highlighting his accomplishments in his career and gaining awareness to bring clients into his boxing session. I would be also be creating advertisements for the gym and for boxing events that would be held in the gyms. During the interview he notified me that the job would be remote which worked perfect for my schedule, as well as I would have design freedom on most projects unless the project details had a specific design direction beforehand. They would send me photos for each project to use along with the design brief. After they explained everything to me about my role, the organization and a brief history of my supervisor and the gym I was excited to intern for them. I knew I would be limited in terms of getting formal office experience and not having an actual art director to shadow but I felt like getting this experience, having connections to a professional boxer which would look good on my resume and joining a place that embraces me and my work to make me feel comfortable is always a great option. I enjoyed speaking with my supervisor assistant, he made me felt a part of the team even before I ultimately ending up choosing them to work for. 

The internship process was a bit of struggle because selecting an internship to align with my schedule was a process I had to thoroughly think about. The Internship I selected was perfect not only because it aligned with my schedule but it gave me an opportunity to start my career path towards being a sports designer. I will be interning for a former boxing champion; he’s a part-owner at a gym in Brooklyn where he holds boxing classes using his boxing experience to help clients improve a healthy lifestyle, achieve weight lost/muscle gain and gain boxing skills. He also holds boxing events out of this gym as well. There are a variety of reasons customers trains with my supervisor but from my perspective the clients are always enthusiastic to work with someone with such experience because boxing isn’t all about learning how to fight and to defend yourself, you have to be discipline and focus because it will improve more than just your health but your lifestyle.  The gym he works out of is one of the oldest boxing gyms in New York City where the door opened up to the public in 1937. Numerous amounts of former boxers even iconic ones have gone in and out of this gym throughout it time. I am honored to be working remote as a social media designer/Graphic designer for such inspirational person.