Second Event “Zoomin’ With Creatives”

The second event is an online event organized and hosted by CUNY ASAP in collaboration with the CityTech COMD department, held via Zoom. This online event is open to anyone interested in design, regardless of their school or major. The event features three seasoned professionals from the design industry: illustrator Marcos Chin, designer Todd Goldstein, and photographer Rehan Miskci.

The event begins with each professional introducing themselves within a set time limit. Their introductions include their personal experiences, the journey of becoming a designer, their current achievements, and their projects. After the introductions, the host moves on to the next segment, which is similar to an interview. The host asks the guests questions, which they then answer. The questions generally cover topics such as challenges faced in the field and how they were resolved, struggles and decision-making processes, obstacles encountered on the path to becoming a designer, moments of doubt, and ways to accumulate design experience. During this time, the host also allows the audience to ask the guests questions. Even if some questions are tricky, each guest does their best to answer and provide what they believe to be reasonable responses. The overall atmosphere is very pleasant. Personally, I appreciate that the host keeps the questions focused and steps in to ask interesting and relevant questions when the audience is unsure what to ask. I often have many questions but struggle to articulate them clearly, so I find the host’s guidance during the Q&A segment very helpful.

The most memorable speaker for me was Marcos Chin because of his personal journey. He mentioned that he is naturally introverted and shy, but he became brave and sought out the necessary resources for his future development. I admire this greatly. I also appreciate his illustration style, particularly his use of color, which gives his work a clean, fresh, and light feel that is very comforting.

Next is Todd Goldstein. I have browsed his website and seen many of his graphic design projects, which offer plenty for me to learn from and observe. Lastly, there is Rehan Miskci. Although her photography style doesn’t personally interest me much, her explanations of each photograph gave me new perspectives on photography. I never realized that photography could be approached in such creative ways.

Internship post

This week, my supervisor Isana hasn’t assigned any design tasks yet. She asked us to check the data she uploaded to Google Drive, keep track of it, and verify its accuracy. She mentioned that the initial plan was to complete the fact sheet first. However, many data points still need to be updated. She also hinted that things will get busier in April with more data updates and additional projects. The fact sheet and other projects might proceed simultaneously, and she’ll decide how to allocate tasks based on the situation. Lastly, she asked Dariann and John about their progress on the heat map.

During the meeting, Isana suggested that we create a group chat to discuss which categories of data each person will handle for the fact sheet. After the meeting, we created a group chat in iMessage. Everyone introduced themselves by name in their first message to clarify which phone number belonged to which intern, in case some of us hadn’t saved each other’s numbers. We then started discussing which parts of the fact sheet we wanted to take responsibility for. After the discussion, I tentatively agreed to handle the pie chart for the fact sheet.

App review Microsoft ToDo & XiaoHongShu

Xiaohongshu, also known as RED. It is a social media where people can share a lot of things such as food, travel guidelines, etc. People also describe RED as “China’s Instagram”. I haven’t had much of known about RED until I was in my internship. During my internship, my supervisor requires us to design covers using a minimalist style. But I would always over-design. And I have no inspiration for how to design by using minimalism.  At this point, RED comes into my head, it is because the users would upload posts that contain different design styles. Which brings me many inspirations. 

One of my favorite things about RED is RED has no notification when you turn off the notification on your settings. While Pinterest has a lot of notifications, once you register by using email. When you turn off notifications on Pinterest, it will keep sending you email. Although Pinterest and RED can search for many great design works. But a message is annoying especially when you are focused on your work, and ding, there is a notification that you received. All the inspirations are gone.

I don’t doubt of my memory when I was a high schooler, but as age got older and older. I need to use something that reminds me what are the things that I need to do. For example, each course has different requirements, each course has different due dates between different works. I like to do my course works nearest the due date. But soon I found out it is not a good hobbit (Mainly because I had tried it when I was a freshman, and I had missed one of the assignments because I didn’t get used to transitioning my position from a high schooler to a college student). I found out that student can get to use Microsoft without paying for it. And I was digging for the application of Microsoft. I found out To Do, you can create a list of what you should do. Which is a perfect fit for me. I can follow the list that I create and do all the work on the list in a day. In this way, I can finish my work on a daily basis. And I would not miss any of my assignments.

Because my phone is set up with Chinese, that is the reason why show the work in Chinese.