After I finished logo for “big production”, I was about to make a mockup. Basically Artwing is a photography agency. Photographs are really important. A photo can make totally different web-site. So I needed some information of the company and some pictures for home page and project page. I asked them before I begin to design.  Because the New York Artwing’s office is being renovated, I usually work on bean n bean cafe in Manhattan. When I work on cafe, my supervisor, scott, visit me and discuss about the project. However since that day, he never come to cafe and email me in two weeks. Finally, I got an email from him. He said that he wanted to see the progress. I felt that I had to show something, so I made a mockup using image from internet. I asked why you didn’t email me. He said he didn’t know he got mail from me. I wanted to say something. I thought it waste my time. Anyways he really likes my mock up. we discussed lay out and main category. He wanted very simple website even doesn’t want slides show.

The last time I was at my internship site at City Tech Image & Visual Communications office. I started on a new project, I had to create a logo for the Alumni Associations mentoring program called Professional Development For You (PG4U). The challenge is to make the logo similar to the Alumni Associations logo. I did research and sketched numerous thumbnails.

We later decided, on which thumbnails I could work with on Illustrator. On Illustrator I created several comps of potential logo’s I could use. This way I could see; which typeface and variations work best for the logos. We decided on which logos and typeface works best.

Today, I was feeling much better. I rolled into the office with a smile and said “good morning” to my co-workers. I setup my MacBook Pro on my desk and fired up Illustrator. Mr. Vargas assigned me to do different versions of a logo. For each logo I used either Bebas Neue or the Gotham typeface. I changed the arrangement of each logo and applied color with transparency.

The fonts worked well because they were both Sans Serif. Bebas Neue is a condensed compared to Gotham. We compared the two and choose, which one worked best. The colors I used were the City Tech colors blue and yellow-orange. When I applied transparency I lowered the opacity of the yellow-orange and the navy. The colors turned into lemon yellow and lavender.

As it approached four o’clock in the afternoon I packed up. There were still some revisions that needed to be taken care of. Mr. Vargas wanted me to continue creating more comps.

November 24, and I am still battling my cold along with dealing with a lost voice. As bad as that sounds, it was not, besides the occasional bouts of almost sneezing everything else was fine. While working on a few projects the art director approached me stating that there was a few things I needed to do. Following, I learned that I will be doing some logos, not necessarily designing them, just typing out the department names and offices. If you are thinking that that sounds boring, once again you would be right. It was extremely repetitive, type the name of the department, then create an outline from the text, then white out everything. It was so mind-numbingly boring that I made a few mistakes here and there. However, nothing that could not be fixed with a simple retype and overwriting the file before anyone sees. I may have started off a bit slow but I managed to finish everything before the end of the day. Currently I am waiting for my next project, which Lisa tells me will be a little bit more creative. I am happy but not too happy, still not into the whole graphic design aspect. And when your next door office worker having a small breakdown about a project that was due yesterday it all does not seem to appetizing. However, I’m starting to like web design again so there is that. Oh, and I finally sneezed, NOW that was the biggest highlight of the day. With that done I could actually concentrate on what needs to be done.

November 23, two more days before Thanksgiving and I’m at my internship, I have lost my voice and currently working on a few projects. At the moment they do not have anything for so I spent the day reworking some of my old websites. Especially since the release of the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge, I needed to figure out how my website would look on its screen. While coding for my website I realized that the background image I had for it was too small. So I re-sized at 960 pixels. Of course doing that I ran into something else. Since it is a one page design, I had to figure out how to keep the graphics on their respective sections which is turning out to be a chore. And then I ran into an additional problem that I did not have yesterday. The paragraph on the site is not doing what I told it too on the style sheet. Problems like these are annoying, but unlike graphic design. I like problems like these, it lets me flex my brain and figure out where the bug is or what code did I leave out that causing the page to act so wonky. I am not at the point where I could say that I love web design but I definitely like it. A whole lot more than I do graphic design. Maybe I should have went into computer science since I like coding so much. I should probably look into that later.

November 18, I heard back from Lisa about my designs, the boring one was obviously gotten rid of but the constellation and the slightly better one I was asked to work on some more. I was given a paper filled with copy for what would be the information appearing on the postcard and I was asked to play with the type a bit more to make them seem less boring. Most of the design work was done, I just needed to add the CUNY Logo as well as the Brooklyn College logo to the back of the post card. Next it was type, I played with type hierarchy a bit a long with the typefaces that the art director had given me. I was given some direction with what information was the most important. Obviously it was the name of the students whose pictures were featured on the postcard who also happen to be the names of the students are a part of the fellowship. I spent so much time playing with the type that I had nearly forgotten the CUNY logo and Brooklyn College’s logo. The CUNY college’s logo was supposed to be small while the Brooklyn College logo is supposed to be big. Makes sense right, well what is seen as big and small is entirely subject to the art director’s perspective. I made the CUNY logo to small and the Brooklyn College too big, so I had to go back and forth re-sizing. I remember something like this from Communications and Design class, logos are a funny thing. If it is to big, it is too loud; however, if it is too small your viewers can’t see it. Somewhere in the middle there is perfection…or as close as you can get to it.

November 17, my second day of my internship at Brooklyn College. Currently I am working on two postcard designs the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship currently happening at Brooklyn College. The main goal of MMUF is to send well prepared minority students to distinguished colleges and universities for graduate studies. The art director, Lisa, stated that the higher ups would like to see a collage of the pictures that I converted and that they would need at least two designs by the end of the day. So I spent the better part of the day researching postcard designs since it has been a while since I have ever seen one physically (thank you email). After a while I just did some sketches for postcard ideas, let me add that I am not particularly fond of graphic design either. Web Design or more specifically the coding I liked the designing part not fond of it at all. I came up with a few designs but nothing I really loved or remotely liked. Eventually I just started to play around with illustrator and Photoshop just to see if anything creative came to mind. I came up with two designs, one that seemed boring and the other was kind of fun but the problem was how I would incorporate it into the design scheme. The boring one had the picture collage front and center with the college’s colors in the back. If you are thinking that is boring, then you would be right. The second one, the slightly fun one, had an polygonal outline in the back with constellations. Fun to do but hard to incorporate it. By the end of the day I had three designs instead of just the two, all of them collages but with different flavors. Lets see how this goes.

From the article of “The Disruption Machine”, one sentence that catches my eye is “the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer”. I believed this is true. Today, everyone must has a USB drive (Universal Serial Bus); we use this to save our documents and our files. It is very useful and easy to carry. I always have two UBS drives in my bag, whenever I want to save something, I can use it. In the past, we used the floppy disk, the size id bigger that the USB. Technology is growing fast, I cannot find the floppy disk now.

Listening to music used by record player and gramophone record was large. I had some gramophone records, but I threw out all of the one year ago. It is because I do not have a record player. I thought that if I kept these, this gramophone record may become an antique and then later become a treasure. Nowadays, we listen to music in mp3.

In addition I remember that the first cell phone was very big; it was not easy to carry. However, it was very convenient for us to make a phone call. For that time, this cell phone was very expensive and not much people had cell phones. Nowadays, I think most people own a smart phone; some people may have more than one. We can see people using them on the bus, ferry, subway, everywhere.

Technology is growing very fast, just as the author wrote, “our devices are getting newer and newer”. Anyway, it is good for us.

In the article of “The Brainstoming Myth” it says that if people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they will end up saying noting.

It is true, if people do not say anything because they are scared to say the wrong thing, we will not get any result.  So, we should not criticize. Brainstorming provides a free and open environment that encourages everyone to participate.  Any ideas are welcome, it can help us develop a rich array of creative solutions.

Osborn said that many of us can work much better creatively when teamed up.  Sometimes, when a person expresses his or her idea, another person can come up with another thinking because of that first idea.  It can bring out  a lot of ideas within a short time when working with a group.  The brainstorm turns people into imagination machines and is a good way to boost productivity.

Brainstorming also can help me to solve problems. Individual brainstorming is good, I do not have to worry about other people’s egos or opinions, I can be free and more creative. I just write down whatever comes into my mind, list my  ideas and do not judge the quality.  It can help me choose a topic, and let me know what I should do.

I think there is no wrong or right, we just make our minds deliver the ideas.  We can say anything  free willingly.  We do not have to be afraid to say anything that comes to mind. Also we always use brainstorm in the classroom.  It is a creativity technique used in the world.

Twelfth Entry: November 18^th.  Today was interesting, mostly because we once again had the opportunity to pitch a few ides for a commercial spot regarding a new plan. Everything has to be well though out, because both new and existing customer see the promotional offers and the representatives in the Corporate locations must be equipped to answer anything that gets thrown their way. 70 Hours wrapped up.

November 16, today was the first day of my internship and things were not running as smoothly as I had hoped. The mac-book I was supposed to use for the internship was being used by someone else, but thankfully I had the foresight to bring my own laptop just in case (unfortunately, I could not get online, that will be relevant). There wasn’t really much to be done for the first day, I simply had to convert RGB photos to CMYK and raise the dpi to 300 without re-sampling them. A few of them really needed some retouches due to the artifacts left behind and some had lost a lot of their vibrancy. Later on in the day I learned that I would be designing a few postcards with the pictures I had worked on. Even though I did not have the exact dimensions for them, I did some very rough sketches just to pass the time away. I would have done some research beforehand, but since I had no internet that was all I could do. After two hours of sketching, I had the bright idea to use my phone’s 4G network to research, the bad part? I had forgot to bring my charger. So I spent the rest of the day either sketching or trying not to fall asleep onsite (did I forget to mention I have had insomnia for the past three days?). When I got home I decided to do some research on them with the hope that maybe tomorrow or the next day, I would finally be able to get online.