It is my second official day on the job from home of course; remember I mentioned the office is under construction due to renovations. So Scott sends me an email with several artist names in the body of the email, he tells me to create promotional cards similar but not the same as the examples attached in the email. From the looks of the previous work, they do not seem difficult, so I started the first one right away. Quickly after starting, I realized he did not include any direction. So I figured I would just read the selected photographers’ online profiles to get a feel for their styles and personality. Usually, you can pick up on a sense of who someone is by his/her work or, at least, this is the way I was conditioned, so after skimming through the work of an artist that Scott selected. I would choose the photos I felt worked best together and import them into Adobe’s Photoshop. I begin by resizing and arranging the photos until I find that perfect harmony that creates a visually stunning promotional card. In all honesty, this was my first time putting together a collage, and it was harder than I had initially presumed. After finishing up and exporting as a Jpeg, I would place all the cards in an email and send it to Scott. After submitting the work, it was time to wait for feedback. Scott replied and just as I anticipated, of course, changes would be needed. I knew this would happen not because I lacked confidence in my work but because of the little to no direction that was giving. Scott wanted the promotional cards to be smaller; he also mentioned how he liked a font that I used for one of the artist names, and he wanted that to be the same on every card. There were also changes to make to some of the photos I selected so that he would say use photos from the fashion accessory section for this artist; this is the kind of direction Scott should have given in the beginning. Either way, I made the corrections, and he was pleased with the revised versions.

On Wednesday after my interview the class met, and I had already started working for Scott’s agency ArtWing NY. I believe this is the class’s 3rd official meeting, but this was the 1st for me. This professor is cool, those were my thoughts as I entered the room; I could not wait to share the news with him. Landed my first internship on my first try and it was all thanks to him. Professor Mason had everyone doing introductions and asked for us to speak about our current status, basically, if we had internships or not. So for me this was great it felt like the first day of class, I realized not everyone had secured an internship yet, so I felt pretty fortunate. When it was my turn, I said my first and last name, my major, expected graduation date; and about how Professor Mason gave me the lead for my current internship. I told everyone that I was interning for ArtWing NY. I went on to explain that it is a fashion photography agency, and I would be creating promotional pieces for the photographers represented by the ArtWing NY. Scott also asked my during the interview if I knew anyone that would be interested in an internship focused on the web design. So I passed on the message to those in the class that did not have an internship as yet. I also explained that I would be working remotely because the office is currently being renovated. So on the bright side I get to work from home without any supervision, but on the other hand I wanted to experience working in the office. If I were in the office I feel like there would be more opportunity to network and build relationships with the photographers.

In the first email I sent to Scott Buchheit, I introduced myself; explaining that I attend the New York City of Technology, and Professor Mason gave me your contact. Scott asked about my skills, so I described what I could do and then told him I can send over a PDF with some examples of my work. Scott then asked what day/s would I be available to work. After checking my schedule, Tuesday seemed like the best day to dedicate. Scott asks if I were free next Tuesday for an interview, of course, I agreed because securing an internship was number one on my list of priorities. Scott then explained that he is also producing a photo shoot, so we should meet at Bean and Bean on 8th Avenue since the shoot is in that area. There was no dress code for this interview, and I was told to bring whatever I wanted him to see. I prepared some of my best work and transferred the files to my IPad and brushed up on some basic HTML since he asked if I had any experience with the web design/coding. As Tuesday got closer I remembered Scott told me to confirm the interview, so wrote an email to confirm our meeting for tomorrow 1 pm at Bean and Bean coffee shop on 8th Avenue. Early Tuesday morning Scott sent an email changing the interview time from 1 pm to 3:30 pm that was fine. I made my way to the city to meet Scott at Bean and Bean; by the way, we never exchanged phone numbers. I arrived at the coffee shop with no idea of what Scott looked like or where he would be sitting, so I sent another email. Scott quickly replied and told me he was sitting closest to the door. I walked over; it looked as if Scott was finishing up another meeting. The interview was over in less than ten minutes he explained that I would be creating promotional pieces for his photographers. Scott hired me on the spot, but to honest the interview felt more casual meeting just to put a face to our names.

On the first day of class I was completely late, in fact, I was so late that I missed the entire class. Now this did not happen because of my poor time management skills, but this happened because of a schedule mix up. I kept switching between the sections that were available, and at some point, I printed the wrong program. So I thought my class was for six o’clock, but the class was actually for 2:30 pm to 5 pm. I arrived a quarter before six with a smile believing that I was on time, which is the ideal way to start the first class. Standing outside of a closed door awaiting the professor’s arrival, I noticed nearby were no other students waiting just me. Time was moving rather fast, and it was after 6 pm, so I found the situation strange. I decided to ask someone in the department if they could direct me to the professor or the internship class. That is when I found out the class ended at 5 pm, but the instructor was currently on the 6th-floor teaching, so I made my way downstairs where I saw Professor Mason but interrupting his class would’ve been selfish. So I decided to send him an email explaining the situation. At this point, I figured my best bet was to show up the following week, now that I knew the time. A week later I arrived a little before 2:30 pm and ran into the same problem, which led to frustration since I knew the time and place to be. What I did not know was that the class met every other week. This raised a panic because I did not secure an internship yet and I had no idea how this would affect me. Luckily I got in contact with Professor Mason and met with him during his office hours. I explained my situation about not having an internship, and we discussed a few possibilities. Professor Mason suggested I reach out to Scott Buchheit from ArtWing NY since he is currently looking for a student to fill an unexpected internship vacancy.

8^th blog-

Today I met with everyone that I would be assigned to work with. I was asked to make revisions to the master deck, it would be used by the marketing team. I guess you can say it was sort of a test run. The first thing I did when editing their deck was removing this hideous orange headline that went across every single slide. It was too bright, overwhelming and looked terrible on the screens when presenting. Next, was their general font that was assigned by Power Point. I changed it to a clean San serif font which looked elegant. I went into their logo and copied the exact colors, to later use on the headlines for each slide. I was doing my best to keep calm before the meeting began. My supervisor introduced me to everyone and I began my presentation. At first, there was no response, no movement. Everyone just seemed to be waiting for me and my next move. Until, one of the marketing members said “Stop, can you go back to the previous slide?” so, I did. I was bracing myself thinking, “oh man, there goes my leap to get away from their original slides. They aren’t going to like this.” “I love this slide,” says Mike and that’s when everyone started to agree and give their feedback. A wonderful feeling, “here’s a good start,” I thought.

Until next time, Shantel

9^th blog post-

My supervisor has been away from the office for about four days now. Before she left, we went over a list of task that I could complete during the two weeks of her absence. One of the most important things I need to get done, is cleaning up all of their original decks. Which I later will be redesigning. There’s a lot of maintenance that I must get done before she comes back but, I’ve been also trying to complete the demands of the rest of the marketing team. It has become a little overwhelming trying to finish what they need within the hours they give me. They don’t really understand the time needed to redesign their jobs, which is typically understandable, most don’t. But, there’s no procedure in which these jobs get passed on to me. Because I am the only graphic designer and a one woman show, I figured this would occur. But, once my supervisor departed, the work demands began coming in large numbers. No one was communicating with each other. No one tried to figure out if the other person had already asked me for something similar. And of course, I take full responsibility on my own mistakes, for never speaking up and trying to put a stop to it. But, to be completely honest, I never wanted them to feel like I wasn’t capable of working at their speed or the speed of their company/ clients needs. So because of that, the work in my opinion was suffering, even though they felt the work was perfect.

Until next time, Shantel

10^th blog-

Today my supervisor returned and although not everything was done from the list she left behind, she was very understanding. The first question she asked me was, “They didn’t leave you alone did they?” and we both laughed. She let me know that it was one of her concerns before she left. She was hoping I would find a way to work around it and she trusted my judgment to prioritize the work. I let her know that even though I was a little overwhelmed towards the beginning, I began to let the guys know that I couldn’t get to their jobs right away. I informed them of my availability and when I could have the work ready for them. And even though I feared knocking their timeline out of whack, that I just couldn’t get to all their demands in the time frame they needed. She agreed with my choices and seemed to be bothered with the way the rest of the team handled themselves. She felt bad that I had to deal with this situation while she was gone and told me that they knew the procedure and how things ran. She assured me that it would stop and that if anyone came directly to me to redirect them to her. I felt relieved.

Until next time, Shantel

11^th blog post-

Today was a fulfilling day. When I arrived at my office, I was told that I would be taking a trip with part of the marketing team. Being the only designer at my company can be quite challenging. Especially when trying to get management to stray away from the typical data images and clichés. There are a lot of data company standards that must be shown in every presentation. Data charts and graphs are usually used in infographics. Majority of the time I have to design around a chart with tons of data and it can be challenging to make that look visually appealing. Today’s trip was to an office on Wall Street. The building and interior design was so clean and bright and everyone seemed to be pleasant. The man conducting the presentation was Wade, Chief Innovation Officer and a good friend to one of my supervisors. From the moment Wade began speaking he had our full attention. He began the presentation by showing off the view and the set up of the room. He then proceeded to demonstrating how the largest touch screen in the entire east coast operated. We were actually dumbfounded not about the touch screen but, the fact that this company had invested in this for their conference room. Wade jumped into his PowerPoint and explained what the company offers their clients. He showed us videos, told us about their application and then he stopped. He asked us if at any moment he mentioned his name or what his job title was? The answer was no. Never did he mention his name or the company’s name, he just provided us with what they did and how they helped their consumers. Of course this technique may not work for all presentations and clients but, the point was to express that you need to be different. You should always approach each presentation in a different format, keep the clients wondering what you will do next.

Until next time, Shantel

12^th Blog-

Lately, I’ve been designing one page documents for the sales team. Since this is a start up company, a lot of key basic elements must be designed asap. I’ve created my own design style and approach for this company and the CEO seems to be liking my work. I work with a lot of negative space and san serif fonts to create my vision. I’ve designed partnerships announcements, proposals for potential clients, stationery’s and letterhead. Some specific reports I’m currently designing are our company’s pricing sheets and our surge report. Because this is a data based company, a lot of the documents are context heavy. My challenge is to use the information that is required to explain what is at hand. I’ll try to balanced out all the context with at least one clean image that illustrates what the document is about.

Until next time, Sha.

13^th blog-

Today, I learned more about the company. To be more specific, I learned how they read their data and how they explain their results to their clients. Segments, are categories in which our data is divided.

For example, (Branded Data> B2B Demo> Professional Groups> Marketing Professional) each group is considered a segment. So, the difference between us and other companies is that we use ABM (Account Based Marketing) to generate revenue. We use Activate ABM powered by intent data that unifies your brand in demand initiatives. Intent data reveals who is researching what and when. Listening to intent signals tells when prospects are in market for your products. By harnessing this data, we reach both the accounts you already know plus those you don’t yet know. Once we identify those accounts, Intent allows you to target not only the decision makers in the right department but all the influencers who have a say in the process.

Additionally, Intent reveals precisely what topics are most important to your prospects. Allowing you, to serve exactly the right message to the right people at the right time.

Your brand and demand campaign can be better than your competitors with Active ABM. You can target the right accounts when they’re exhibiting the most propensity to buy and sometimes that’s all it takes.

Until next time, Sha.

14^th Blog-

Today, I had a meeting with my supervisor about a new project that I’ll be designing this week. I am to redesign our Co-Op page. The current page isn’t up due to the fact that my CEO and supervisor aren’t too happy with the way it looks. During our meeting, she told me what needs to remain the same: the border (which matches all the rest of the site’s pages), the font and of course the content. Most of the site’s design was clean and used a lot of negative spaces just like I used for the one page documents. I was given three quotes that were going to be placed in a slide under the banner. I decided to design the quote using the company colors and pictures of surfboards. Surfboards have become a part of the company brand due to the name meaning large waves. I created a mockup and handed it over to my supervisor who then passed it off to our coder. The finalize page will be completed and reviewed next week. I’m very excited to see the end results.

Until next time, Sha.

15^th Blog-

I’m currently still working at my location. It seems like a great place to be and it has to do with brand identity, which is what I’m interested in proceeding. It’s a great environment and everyone already treats me like a part of the team.  This week we were working on the holiday packages that will be mailed to clients and partners as well as, our customized holiday cards. My new task is huge for my company and myself.  My CEO and supervisor are going on a world tour and they will be using my designs to land new contracts with new companies. I’m definitely beginning to feel the heat. Everyone is moving at a fast pace and we’re all playing catch up. We have a week and three days to finalize a presentation, video and collect recent accurate data from our sister company. This time around I’m working with the company’s CEO, Senior Accountant, Programmatic Director and Head of Marketing. There will be a lot of opinions and suggestions on how to complete this task and it could potentially be hard to manage but, I believe I know how to stay afloat. It’s pretty simple, our CEO is the client he’s leading this tour, his call. I would like to see this all through and land a permanent position with this company. We’ll see! Fingers crossed.

Have a good break, Sha.

This week we [all interns] were assigned a new project. This project is the African American Heritage 2016 poster, for internal purposes at HRA. The theme for next year is Hallowed Grounds. The ladies who asked for this project want there to be some sort of map of all the hallowed grounds around the nation and the tagline is RESPECT. REVERENECE. REMEMBERANCE. Another direction is the underwater sculptures that exist off the coast of Greneda. They were designed by an artist and portray children holding hands in a circle, among other sculptures. I feel this idea is powerful because the sculptures have actually begun growing coral and helping the environment and ecosystem around those shores. I think I’ll head in this direction because its uplifting, poetic, and portrays the importance of love for eachother, love for the environment, and persevering through all odds. It does all of this without dampening the mood and I think that’s important. You don’t want to offend or anger people by doing something that makes them feel angry or disrespected. At the end of the day we all want to be recognized for our best qualities, and acknowledged as human beings, no matter where we are from.

This week at work we printed one of my pieces, a 2’x3’ poster that will be at a convention in Manhattan for a training event. Just as I was about to leave on Tuesday my supervisor calls me over to see the laminating process in action so I can learn to do it. Lately I was shown how to use big machines at work that will provide us interns with a lot of to-do’s going forward.   One machine was the brochure machine, which spits out air and uses two rulers to adjust how the paper is folded. I believe I spoke of this machine in an earlier blog. The next machine we learned how to use was a huge printer that needs to be loaded up with a roll of paper that’s about ¾ the size of me. After that you feed the end of the roll to the printer and it cuts a straight line along the edge you just fed it, in order for your work to be straight. After that, if everything is aligned you will be able to choose your settings and proceed as normal. If the paper is not aligned correctly you wont be given the option to continue and in fact the printer will alert you and force you to realign the roll and paper until its perfect. It’s a nice feature to ensure your work is always pristine but at the same time can be quite annoying. The next machine I learned about was a cutting machine that uses a a sharp piece of metal and the aid of a laser to cut through anything pretty much. We load up the print job and use knobs on the edge of the “table” of the machine to adjust the positioning of the cut we want. After that is taken care of we close a plastic lid over the edge so no scraps fly out and hit us, and we finally push two buttons simultaneously to summon the blade and make a nice cut through around 50 sheets of paper or slightly more at once.

Now back to the lamination machine. This poster had to be printed on the huge printer I mentioned. Afterwards that sheet was trimmed down to around 3 inches from the crop mark and placed in an “envelope” of sorts. It’s a piece of foam core that has a plastic sheet over it. The printed piece goes between those two elements and you then feed that into the lamination machine, which melds everything together using heat. I was taught about the air bubbles and how to combat against those which is something I’ve dealt with as a student with mounting things. Finally, we were ready to cut it down to size but unfortunately only had access to an x acto knife, so the process was extremely tedious and we had to do this for 2 posters. After gaining all this production knowledge, I’m pretty well equipped now to move forward as my internship continues. It was definitely an enjoyable experience and one I’ll always value.

The last week was very productive at the internship. We learned how to use a somewhat ancient looking machine that uses air to make brochure folds.   It uses two presise measurement rulers that are designed to be adjusted based on the dimensions of the paper you’re using. For 8.5 by 11 we need to have both measuring on E. Its quite interesting and we [myself and the other interns] will have to use it going forward as our superiors want nothing to do with that machine.

We also learned how to use an extremely long printer that you must load a huge roll onto, sort of like toilet paper! You then feed the sheet to the printer and if its aligned properly, the printer will cut the edge of the sheet in a straight line just as assurance and then your project will print after clicking through the various menu options that you need.

Also over the course of the week, I worked on a new project, which was a 24 by 36 poster that will be for a specific workplace training in the city. I wasn’t given much creative direction for this one, except that I did not have to use a photo, and to stick to the branding of the colors. They were purple and gold. Ultimately I used the pen tool to create some swirls that allowed the text to sit snug within a visual frame, and it allowed me to fill up most of the empty space around the entire canvas.   I also started my African American Heritage project over again…just the map part. I’m realizing now that creating a map is way more difficult than I anticipated. But we’ll see how that goes in the future. The deadline for that project is the end of December or early January the latest.

Last week was surprising.   HRA’s only day off was Thanksgiving itself. Many people didn’t show up on Friday but the design team was there working. That was a very interesting experience since I’m used to being off on Friday from CUNY’s thanksgiving break weekend and public schools before that. This week I spent working on my new African American Heritage month idea. I was planning to spice up the map by adding symbols to the edges of the paper. These symbols are on the actual national burial ground monument and are varied; some are religious, other are more spiritual, and that is the best part of it. There is no exclusivity to these symbols, that they can represent anyone who was buried here; these symbols can represent anyone today as well. I re-created 10 of the symbols in Illustrator and began dotting them around the sheet. Finally I scrapped out my old map. It was just a childish, color-based illustration that didn’t really align with the concept at large, which is to create an old map of different hallowed grounds.

Another project I worked on was a children’s calendar flyer [for the children’s calendar I worked on earlier in the semester]. This flyer just needed revisions so my supervisor handed it down to me. The revisions required simple date modifications, a few text replacements and omissions and a bit of picture replacements. There was a print and a web version and both had similar revisions. Throughout the week I also had to prepare some files for printing at our exterior print shop. In order to do so I had to find the files by specific name on the server, and load them into a folder that is named after the assignment number of that project. The folder name is usually a ridiculous number. After that is said and done I had to make sure that the color properties were correct and that they were hires files. On to the next week I suppose.

This week was a bit crowded. I finally finished working on my African American heritage month concept. I also created a old time map which is the concept that they originally wanted. I haven’t worked on that much, its just some color and a proof of concept really…but this other concept is wonderful and I hope they choose it. I spent the last 3 weeks doing research on the underwater sculptures, and putting my illustration skills to the test. This week we were assigned a few projects. One was redesigning the logo of an internal award at HRA the Commissioners Excellence Program. That is awarded to workers who excel and go beyond the call of duty. The original logo was messy and very busy. I sketched and wrote a lot for a day or two until I came up with the idea to create hands all reaching for the light of NYC, Lady Liberty’s torch. This is what all employees at HRA do. They help residents of NYC keep going, by directing them or helping them gain access to SNAP food stamps and other programs for families in need. Together we all help the city strive for that light, that drive to improve one’s self, or just the ability to survive a few months while times are harsh.