Last week Thursday, I attended the networking event at the Grace Gallery of New York City College of Technology. The Grace Gallery was holding an event to show some work of Mr. Spigna and allow you the chance to talk to him and ask him questions. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get the chance to talk to him because there were many others trying to. Instead, I walked around to look at his work and talk to some students and professors on the side. I was able to find and talk to friends from previous classes. They introduced me to a few of their friends and we talked for a bit. After that I talked to a few professors, some from previous courses and some that I haven’t had the chance to meet yet. I was finally able to meet Davis and got the chance to talk a bit with him.

I don’t really like script fonts because it is sometimes difficult to read it. I feel like the extra lines feel too decorative sometimes and distracts you from the type. But, it is different when I look at his script because most of the lines tend to curve back toward the text itself. Even if the extra lines draw your attention, if you follow the flow it brings you back to the center; the content and text. I really enjoyed walking around and looking at his work because it was so simple and elegant and relaxes me to look at something so beautiful.

This work stood out a lot to me because most work in the Gallery was script except for 2 works, this being one of them. I really liked this font because it was simple and clean. I enjoy seeing the previous drafts he put up with it because it gives us an understanding of the process of creating a font from scratch.

Overall, this networking event was really relaxing and enjoyable. I was able to talk to old classmates and professors and also able to meet new friends and professors I haven’t had before. The work was really beautiful, elegant, and simple and it was worth coming to attend.

For my first networking event, I attended a presentation in City Tech Pearl-114/115 of Martellus Bennett (Marty). Marty is the former NFL player of New England Patriots and is now an Animator, Illustrator, and Entrepreneur. He retired from NFL to pursue his career of illustration and animation. His first animation was released 2014 and his first book 2 years after in 2016. His goal is to bring diversity to the screen, to tell the story of colored kids. He wants to bring diversity to the screen so kids can relate to characters that resemble them. His main focus is to let kids know about the power of imagination, which is why he made the books and animation of AJ, who is based off his 4 year old daughter.

His presentation was really chill and fun, unlike most other presentations I went to. He was really casual and honest with us, occasionally telling jokes during presentations. He was willing to answer our questions regarding him, his career, and future plans. A few things/answers really stood out to me such as how he wants to be the “black Willy Wonka” because he wants kids to like his work and want to go see it like Willy and his chocolate factory. One question asked was “How did you know you want to change career?” and he answered that there is never a right time to follow your dream, just do it and it really stood out to me. He also told us that a skill he had before doing illustration was collaboration/teamplay because he was playing with a team in NFL. He said this skill helped him alot for his creative career because he had to work with others and that it allowed him to gain allies and help for his book and animation.

We then had some questions relating himself such as his greatest fear, which he answered losing his wife and kids and not being able to tell his stories. He made a comparison with the not being able to tell his stories, that its like throwing away a pen full of ink; wasting potential. Another question was his “next big goal” and he answered that he wants to own his own theme park named MartyLand.

Overall, this presentation was really enjoyable and educating because he told us how he changed his athlete career to creative career and his journey to make his book and animations. A joke that he said that stood out was that he liked football because he loved tackling other people and slapping others butt (joke). He then said that if you see it on sports channel everyone would love it but different story if it was on a news channel. Something that stood out to me most was when he was asked “What do you do about people who talk bad of you?”. He answered fuck it, you can’t do shit about that, not everybody will love your work. But there will be people who would enjoy your work, that it outweighs the haters. To focus on those that enjoy rather than dislike.

He is also a musician technically because he made a collaboration with Snoop Dogg and the song made it to Top 30 in Canada.

The dress attire of my company is Business formal. We are told to dress up professionally in a work environment. The dress attire rules are no hoodies, no sneakers, ties are optional, and to tuck in your shirt. Lyle highly emphasizes on looking neat and dress up nicely to respect the company and others in the environment because first impressions matters. I personally wear a dress shirt or black polo shirt with black dress pants and dress shoes.

Our work environment is open work area. Interns and Ellisen share the big open room with laptops and computer set up. The room is linked to the kitchen, bathroom, storage room, and Lyle’s office room. Lyle has his own room and when we need to speak to him we would knock the door and walk in when answered.

My workday starts at 10am upon arrival and I would show Lyle the work I’ve been doing and then I would tell him what I plan on accomplishing/what I would be doing today in the office. Lyle would agree with me and sometimes give me something extra to do on the side such as looking for images to use for our posters, pamphlets, and/or cards. I get to take a 30 minute lunch break when I want, I just need to tell Lyle before leaving and to make sure I come back on time. After the break, I continue to work on the project and at the end of the day I would show Lyle the progress and upload the files to the shared Drive.

My supervisors are Ellisen Wang (Internship Coordinator) and Lyle Benjamin (Founder). I email and text Ellisen to talk about my work availabilities. So if CUNY decides to change a day to follow a different day’s schedule, I would text Ellisen to give him a heads up that I won’t be able to go to work that day and talk about a day to make up the hours. When I work in office/remotely, I speak to Lyle for directions of projects.

I found this internship from Internships.com and specifically applied to Internship locations which is nearby my home. I applied to many other internships, 16 Things wasn’t the only one I applied to. I sent my application in through Internships.com and received a follow up email for my ePortfolio so they could see the type of work I do and if they are interested. After sending the ePortfolio link, I received another email from Ellisen to schedule for a interview for the internship spot. The next day, which I was scheduled for, I came in to the office for my interview.

When the interview started, I was greeted and introduced to Ellisen who was the Internship Coordinator. He asked me a few questions such as “Why did you choose 16 Things Kids Can Do?”, “Why should we choose you?”, “What do you hope to gain from this interview?”, “What do you know of the company?”, and many other questions. After being asked the interview questions, I was introduced to Lyle and received a second interview. Lyle mainly talked to me to get to know my personality and show me the type of work I would be dealing with and also previous works from other interns.

The company in which I am working for Internship Fall 2018 is called “16 Things Kids Can Do”. 16 Things is a non-profit organization that hopes to provide an on-going network of books, programs, events, and activities that will educate and empower kids, people and the planet to be proactive on a host of fundamental issues … like health, nutrition, fitness, education, business, volunteering, environment, and life skills.

The company is founded by Lyle Benjamin, who attended law school which he left because he felt that it wasn’t what he want to do. Instead he utilized his skills create magazines and board games. Eventually he wanted to do something more meaningful so he created organization to help start up businesses. Now he changed to motif to help kids learn about the environment and help provide them skills and knowledge to help them in the future.

The size of the company is relatively small, it only has 1 location which is 20 East Broadway in Manhattan of New York City. The primary business is to offer kids events, programs, books, and activities to educate them. The company’s customers/clients are primarily sponsors such as St. John’s University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pace University, and more. The company also has a donation page for locals and supporters to donate money to support the programs. The department I work within the company is the Graphic Design. Recent news articles mentions 16 Thing’s book as innovative because it encourages kids to listen to experts teach them about the importance of health, education, finance, and nutrition.

This project’s objective is to create a poster to persuade people to go out and vote for Election Day. The concept of my project is a chopped tree with a vote ballot sticking out of it. This concept is to target environmentalists, people who is concerned with or advocates the protection of the environment, to vote during this upcoming election to protect our environment and trees. A challenge that I faced this project was the due date, this project had a tight schedule and I didn’t have that much time to work on it due to work and other class projects.

Pinterest Link for Reference Files:

Brainstorm

Thumbnails

Concepts

Final (Inked)

Final (Edited)

Value Rough

Final (Colored)

Final Poster

Final Poster (PDF)

Get Out The Vote Poster PDF

Sketchbook Work

My client for this project is Eden’s Natural Tea. The purpose of this assignment was to create a new Illustration for my client’s product. The concept I created are floating islands with waterfalls flowing off it into a cup on a cloud. The reason for that was because Eden is also known as “God’s Garden” which I portrayed as a floating island. The waterfall into a cup represents the “natural” theme of Eden’s tea product and that the tea is affordable and high quality; which is how Eden’s brand describe themselves. A challenge that I faced during this project is the ink brush, it was difficult to control the brush weight. Maintaining a consistent brush weight was difficult and I had to redo the final many times because I accidentally smear the ink.

Pinterest Link for Reference Files:

Brainstorm

Thumbnails

Concept Sketches

Final (Sketch)

Ink Practice/Value Swatch

Shade Practice

Final (Inked)

Product Mockup

Week 1 Sketchbook

Week 2 Sketchbook

Week 3 Sketchbook

Week 4 Sketchbook

Course Experience: An Analysis of the Experience of Visual Perception

            At first in this class, I expected it to be really easy and consist mostly of note taking. I expected this class was about teaching us what Graphic Design was and the basic information about it. I also expected it to be mainly using software like Photoshop and Illustrator. I assumed it was going to teach us what careers and jobs would be available from this major and how the work environment was like.

However, this class is completely different from what I expected. There isn’t much note taking in this class and it has a lot of hands on activity work here, like drawing and painting. This turned out to be more difficult than I expected. This class is more competitive and the work must be really precise and sharp. The professor has high expectations from her students. She expects us to incorporate suggestions from her and the class to create better work. In this class, the work can only work or doesn’t work. Personal pronouns aren’t allowed to be used in critique.

Throughout the class, I was able to learn many things of work to improve the sensitivity of my eyes. The professor has displayed many ads to us to guide us to what works and what doesn’t work in them. She will discuss with the class on whether the ad was effective or not and why. We discussed ways to change the ad to make it more effective. Such as changing the colors in the ad to create a stronger focal point on the product. She also trained us to be precise on measures, even if it is 1/32^nd or 1/16^th of an inch off. I was able to learn the art vocabulary and designer terms from this class. During this class, illusion on our artworks occurs a lot. The most common illusion that occur is when we draw rectangles. When the margins are exactly the same, the rectangle creates an illusion that one side has more space than the other. Finally, we are working on the final project, to create a Go Green poster and applying narrative to it.

Pattern

Monochrome