Lameek Russell's ePortfolio

So because this is a small law office I have not anyone I would consider a mentor or role model. All of there graphic design works seem to come from interns and their website was freelanced a while ago and just gets updated when they need to. This is a real bummer for me because when I did my internship associate degree( I still don’t think its fair that credit did not roll over, but whatever) I worked for a guy in the graphics department where I was challenged on a different level because he saw I had potential. He introduced me to this freelancing site to increase my skills and to be able to take criticism 

I believe I am doing pretty well on the job. I find myself pretty busy when there is work to do, so I would like to take that as a good sign that I am useful and do not need to be micromanaged. I give my creative input when an Idea comes up that can not happen. For example, my job site creates a lot of ads. A lot of them some old and new end up looking like Dr.Zizmor

Slanted Pictures and text with no grid and margin, or just an overwhelming amount of text. I just like clean modern design with plenty of space to breath. Below is an example. This is an ad I dislike for many reasons like colors, photo feathering, and that poor cut out of the rolled up money. The vertical conversion just looks slightly cleaner to me. I don’t have permission to change the image or the color or I would have done so. I did it once before and they dislike that I did so. I chose a modern business feel they were going for the classic strict business look.

For this Summer internship, I have not been given a collaboration project. I know we do plenty of them in school just to prepare for real-world situations but it has not come up yet. The closest thing to that is this one-time consuming project that has been split up. it sounds like a collaboration but it isn’t. due to the shift and new creation of different newspaper and online post. My job site needs a large selection of ads converted into 5 size formats. each size format is different so some are so small we can only put the important things. some are just right to rework that all content fits. we split of the load to make the job quicker. but its still a time-consuming project.

One personal thing I learned on the job is that I am not as nonchalant as I thought I was. I usually try not to let things affect me because I refuse to let someone be the controller of my mood. But when the work piled on(like in any workplace) on me during crunch time because of an event they were having every second counted. I was given the opportunity to do an intro in Adobe After Eectsfor the award ceremony. She said you can do it in whatever program you used to do a class project I showed her during my interview. Here is where things went downhill.

After learning the award ceremony was 4 work days for me away I began to panic because that meant I had 3 of those 4 work days to get it done. Not only did I begin to panic but I was a bit irritated by the workload. On top of that,  I am one of two people with my own laptop so a lot of the files they have cant be opened on there computers because they have older versions. So when I would try to work on the really important thing she would give me 3 things that can be done by another graphic design intern even after I explained I need time to work on the intro.

To make a super long story short she gave me side projects instead of giving them to the other design intern. Because of this the into did not get done properly. There was a placeholder left on the last awardee name and what I rendered out took 8 hours because my laptop ram is low for a speedy render. There was no more time to render at this point. I was working to 1 in the morning to get it done and did not get the message about the placeholder until 5 pm the next day. After all the rushing I learned I have to learn to breath yes I could have been more vocal about needing more time and fewer side projects but the wrong was not on me. Who waits days before to start such an important project. Like I said before there is always work to b done here.

Another thing I can say I am learning on the job is time management. I’m pretty knowledgeable when it comes to the projects I am given I finish them with the hour or a couple. I have learned unless it is needed asap to take the time to double check things even though the content given to me was supposed to have already been proofread by two sometimes three people. A situation came up where I was given content that I did not read it because I was just supposed to redesign and update what was already there.

So after multiple finished versions, it finally got printed and the older lady that I mentioned in a previous journal blog decided to read it and she found tons of misspellings and grammatical errors that no one else found. My supervisor got some words from the founder. Again none of it was directed at me but the tension was thick in the air. I was given content that was checked 3 times by three different people. Even if I got yelled at I would have just laughed it off because I had nothing to do with proofreading, I was just told to put it together. Though when I can If the content is small enough or if I have some time extra time ill run it through a spell checker just to save someone from getting yelled at.

I will have to say so far, what I am learning is places I don’t what to work. Formal setting itch my skin. I really don’t get how people can enjoy it. but whatever pays the bills I guess. I currently work with InDesign a lot creating layouts for print related materials. Lots of work is given and it is really a un-busy moment.  Flyers, ads, panels, newspapers things like that. I thought I was well rounded enough to remember InDesign fluently like I do illustrator and photoshop but it took some extra time remembering the shortcuts for a smoother professional workflow. I guess that’s one of the things I am getting out of this internship. it’s not taking me out of my comfort zone yet but it is bringing me back to the basics that I have lost in that program. I will also like to throw in how important it is to step back to what you are doing. I have copied and pasted mispled thing or grammatically wrong content over and over again.  If I’m told to make it look nice or update 85% of the time I don’t read the body content. I read the headlines but the body is where the error lyes.

I am a person who connects through vibes. I can feel the tension in the air and I’m sure all offices have some. I will say I don’t like to see people being disrespected in the workplace even if they are incompetent. If you hired a person, it is now your responsibility to either fire the person or elevates their skills through training. I’m not speaking about myself, but my first day working here I witness disrespect being thrown at an older lady who is let’s say technology challenged. I have bee raised to respect my elders no mater any situation. so it was surprising for the first day.

The culture of the place I work is weird just like any  formal environment to me. The people are extremely nice but there is something off about the work environment. The workspace is small and cluttered and the founder of the company only talks when he needs something. when he does it’s usually in a rude manner. He never talks to any of the interns so it’s not directed at us but I feel bad for his actual employees. Which is why the mood of the office is probably odd.

Other then the mood for the law office, it is a very formal setting. I usually wear the same shirt because I hate formal setting. I choose not to spend money on clothes if I am not being paid to work there. I have formal clothes if I need them that fits how I dress but barely any for a formal setting like this. Moving on I like to sit at the corner of conference table because this was the only window that had direct sunlight and view of the street.  The blinds open enough to see what was going on out there. I like to have lots of direct sunlight in my work environment and fresh air. The opposite is what the owner of the company likes so all the windows must stay closed with a humorous post on them

Well, to be honest time was ticking. During the ending of my search, I was scared I could not find an internship on time. I had been on 3 interviews and a phone and time were ticking away fast, then faster then I was out of options. I contacted my supervisor who is head of operations by email. I got the contact from the Prof. and emailed my supervisor the same night. I introduced my self and sent her my portfolio website.

The following day while I was at the gym I got an email saying can I make it to her office for an interview that same day in the time frame of 2 hours. I couldn’t make it but said yes anyway and rushed there. She hired me on the spot and said I can start the next day. The phone Interview I had who I ruled out called me a couple day after I accepted and offered me the internship, now I was in a jam. Though I had only worked there for few days I knew I disliked the work I was doing. The choice was, be an honest jerk and quit after my supervisor express to me that they need a person who can do layouts and gave me several projects. Or choose the place I knew I get the most challenging work out of to use for my portfolio and work experience.

I decided to stay at the place that hired me first because I felt it would have been unprofessional of me to leave so suddenly. Though my portfolio would have been happy my conscious would have eaten at me for making a commitment and quitting because I have never done so.

To start off I did my best to seek an internship that would showcase my skills. I could not land one in time as the all either already started or started too late and the one I did land was remote. It was a company in Texas looking to expand and was doing so by the use of interns to take on the incoming workflow. It would have been useful for my portfolio but taking internship would have meant I would have to quit a commitment I just have I have just. So I stayed for professionalism.

I currently intern at The New Chambers of Commerce. I thought this was a traveling firm because based on the information I got, it was called Caribbean American Weekly. This was just a side newspaper the “law office” publishes. They are currently working on new paper they are trying to start called Workers’ World Today. This work site is a pretty small company in downtown Brooklyn. Their primary business is to help people in need of a lawyer as this is truly a law office. But they extend their help. They have plenty of side businesses to help small business or people looking to self-employ.

I don’t see the lawyer side of the business or its clients but I see the weekly meeting the have for the small business owners. The information they give them is pretty helpful. I could not find any articles own this small company but I read a lot of the stuff they put in their publishings. From what I understand, They truly want to help people monetize themselves for a small cost and in some cases free. show people alternative routes and how to get government contracts for things as small as a person who creates picture frames.