Week 1 (Aug 29 – Aug 30) (Mon 4 hrs + Tues 4hrs = 8 hrs)

The internship I am apart of is for the Office of Assessment and Institutional Research (AIR), in which they were seeking for COMD interns who are interested in developing their graphic design skills. During the summer I contacted the office via email and told them I was interested in becoming an intern. Yimi Yongchao Zhao was the one who I had to contact for this internship, she asked for my resume and we then schedule an interview. During my interview I was personally introduced to Yimi Yongchao Zhao and Dr. Tammie Cumming, they will be my supervisors for this internship. They gave me a overview of what this internship consist of and what type of work I will be working on. I then showed them my portfolio in which I received good compliments on. They explained to me that it will be me and another intern working, and I start on Monday Aug 29. On my first day I was introduced to the staff and got a brief on what they do within the office. My supervisor Dr. Cumming had a meeting with me and Angie which was the other intern, the meeting was about our 1^st project. The project was a handbook called “Surveys Handbook”; this handbook had outdated information that had to be updated with some design changes. I had to look at their existing handbook and give them my opinion towards it. Looking at it I saw some poor quality images that could be retouched, and some spelling issues. After that I was given the instructions on what to update on this handbook. So for the remainder of the time I worked on updates for this handbook.

 

Week 2 (Sep 6) (Tues 8hrs)

I worked for one day this week due to the Labor Day holiday for a total of 8 hours.  I was continuing to make updates to the Surveys Handbook. The program I am using to make these updates is Adobe InDesign. While making these updates I noticed that this handbook lacked a grid system, so I came up with a grid that would make the handbook content look more organized. I came across some spelling errors and immediately corrected them before I made any design changes. The handbook dimensions are 8.5×5.5 (folded) 8.5×11 (opened). Continuing to make updates my supervisor asked for my opinion on the type of paper this handbook should be printed on. So we looked at current printed handbooks and thought card-stock might be nice with a saddle stitch.

 

Week 3 (Sep 12 – Sep 13) (Mon 8hrs + Tues 8hrs = 16 hrs)

This week was the final week for the updates to be made to the “Surveys Handbook”. I retouched some of the images that had poor quality; I used Adobe Photoshop to do some retouching work to these photos. I changed the contrast/saturation, brightness and sharpened the images. The objective was to enhance photo quality and make all the images being used in this handbook look as one. During that week I was told to go and check out the print shop, as we prep the Survey handbook to be printed. This is where I got the opportunity to see how work is sent to be printed in mass amount. The print shop was pretty big and loud, all you can hear in there was the machines doing their work. I was talking to the guy who takes the jobs to be printed. I explained to him the type of paper we wanted to print the “Surveys Handbook” on with a saddle stitch. He advised me that card-stock paper with a saddle stitch will cause the book to belly up, this meant that the book will not be flat when sitting on a table and you will see a lift instead. He then showed me another quality of paper that will give the handbook a professional look when printed. The type of paper that he recommends is a 20lb paper, I then took his advice and talked to my supervisor about it. After that discussion we then agreed that we would go with the 20lb paper because it still gave it a quality look.

 

Week 4 (Sep 19 – Sep 20) (Mon 8hrs + Tues 8hrs = 16 hrs)

The “Surveys Handbook” is finally finished with all the designs and updates that it needed. I told my supervisor and it was sent off to be printed. We then had another meeting for the next project we will be working on. This project was another handbook but this one was called the “General Education Handbook”. We started to look at the content that had to be designed for this handbook; it was a good amount of content. My supervisor wanted us to start on the forms sections of the handbook, these forms will be retrievable via AIR website. These forms will be a fillable PDF, so that people will be able to fill it out online and print if needed. There were a total of 15 forms that were 1-2 pages for each form. After we had all the contents for these forms we saved them as a PDF, we used Adobe Acrobat Pro to design them to be fillable.  By the end of my workweek all forms were completed and ready for upload on the site.

 

Week 5 (Sep 26 – Sep 27) (Mon 8hrs + Tues 6hrs = 14 hrs)

My supervisor looked at the fillable PDF’s that we have done and was happy with how quick we was able to get them done. Aside from all that she was explaining to me that there is an employee leaving the AIR department and they will be holding a party to honor her. She wants me to design a photo book as an appreciation present to the employee that is leaving the department. Dr. Cumming then gave me the photos that had to be put into the book, it was a folder filled with photos that needed to be retouched. After doing the retouching of the photos in Adobe Photoshop I then selected the best 10 that I thought would be good for this book, in which all she wanted was the best 10 photos for a 10 page photo book. While designing I was playing with various backgrounds and captions to give the book personality. What was challenging was selecting and designing the book to express the person who was leaving, I didn’t know her personally so it was hard for me to design for her preference. Since it was a surprise I couldn’t go to that person and find out what she likes/dislikes because it would be too suspicious. So I went to Dr. Cumming and she helped me get a better sense on how to set the tone for this photo book. When I finished the book I had my supervisor take a look at it before it was sent off to be printed. Dr. Cumming thought it was great and approved the book, it was then sent off to be printed.

 

Week 6 (Oct 3 – Oct 4) (Mon 6hrs + Tues 6hrs = 12 hrs)

When I came in my supervisor said the printed version of the photo book came out really nice. We also had a meeting with the other members of the AIR department. My supervisor wants the AIR department to be more active on social media; she also wants a goal of 1k followers on twitter. As of today there are 419 followers on twitter, so we need 581 more followers to meet the goal. She was asking me what social media sites are popular these days; my response was Twitter, Facebook Instagram and Snapchat. I advised her that I thought Instagram would be an account you might want to create since they already have Twitter and Facebook. AIR takes research and creates facts and stats using the student’s feedback within the school. With Instagram we can post info graphics using those facts and stats, it will make students become more aware about AIR and the school. She liked the idea so we created the account, now they are officially on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Dr. Cumming still wanted us to find a way to gain twitter followers. The next thing during the meeting she was saying we should run a campaign to bring awareness of the AIR department because this department if for the students and she feels they are not aware of the information/support this department provides. Some ideas I put of there were designing posters, flyers, and promotional items. She said it sounds good and would like a plan on how we can execute it. So what we did was research and analyze the activity on social media and think of other ways we can engage awareness.

 

Week 7 (Oct 11 – Oct 12) (Tues 6hrs + Wed 6hrs = 12 hrs)

From last weeks brainstorming and research, we came up with a plan to start working on this AIR awareness campaign. We decided to start on posters, we started brainstorming and sketching ideas for the posters that will be posted around for the students to see. We tried to come up with catchy/creative wording to grab the attention of students/viewers. We researched on the web and looked around the school to gain inspiration when designing these posters. With our ideas and sketches Angie and me gave feedback to one another on what was good and bad. We tried to round it off to the best 3 from each person. After that we started to take the sketches and designed them digitally. We used Illustrator and InDesign to make these designs; we decided that the dimensions of the posters should be 11×17. The designs are still in the process of being complete.

 

Week 8 (Oct 17 – Oct 18) (Mon 6hrs + Tues 6hrs = 12 hrs)

Continuing to work on the poster designs my supervisor wanted to pull me off that to start something else that needed to be done. Yimi and Dr. Cumming showed me this database that showed what the students made after there 1st and 5th year of graduating from the college. It was really interesting looking at all the different majors and seeing the amount of income each major brings in. This database is so detailed that you can refine the search selecting stuff like a specific year, gender, majors, number of graduates etc. I feel like this information should be promoted to give students the sense of how much they can be making graduating within that major, I know as a student I would like to see information like this knowing what’s to come. They explained the purpose of me looking at this database, in which they both would like me to create a presentation for the president of the AIR department. This presentation will provide information showing the top income majors for both 1st and 5th year graduates. It will also provide facts about these majors using the information of this database. So for this week I was collecting information from the database selecting the highest income and graduates. I was also thinking about what program I should use to create the presentation; it was between Keynote, InDesign and PowerPoint. I decided to use PowerPoint because Dr. Cumming said she wanted a PowerPoint presentation.

Week 9 (Oct 24 – Oct 25) (Mon 6hrs + Tues 5hrs = 11hrs)

I continued to work on the PowerPoint presentation this week using the information collected from the database. While I was designing this presentation I went to Yimi to get feedback, we had a meeting exchanging ideas of what else should be added to this presentation. We want the people viewing this presentation to be engaged and informed about this information being provided. As said before the objective was to show the graduation rate and income wages increasing throughout the years. When I added more information the presentation was completed, so now I am currently awaiting feedback from Dr. Cummings because she may have some more ideas on what to add if needed. For the remainder of the week I started to come up with design ideas for the AIR website banner slides. It was time for a update in which me and Dr. Cumming have discussed before, since they are launching a new redesigned website using WordPress these banners will contribute to the redesign.

Week 10 (Oct 31 – Nov 1) (Mon 6hrs + Tues 6hrs = 12hrs)

This week I continued to work on the new web banners for the AIR redesigned website. I used both Adobe Illustrator and InDesign to design these banners. Yimi also came to me and asked if I could design them a professional letterhead in which they did not have one. So I came up with a few sketches and started to design them in Illustrator. While designing the letterhead I didn’t know how I would make it into a template. Making a template will help the AIR team open the file and allow them to type the information attached with the letterhead design. I did some research and found out that if you design it in Illustrator you can then save it as a .png file and import it into a Microsoft Word document, which will then allow them to have a professional letterhead and be able to type information. Learning how to do this was something new to me and I’m happy I learned it because it will benefit on the long run. As of this week I have a total of 121hrs from since I started the AIR internship on Aug 29th, I have met the requirement to have a total of 120hrs for my internship class. Having my required amount of hours completed I will still continue to intern at AIR until December. As of right now I will say this experience interning at AIR benefited me in many ways, it help me better communicate with my peers, learn new techniques in designing and gain experience in which is needed to become a better designer.