Category: Journal Blog

Week 11: 4/9/2023–4/15/2023 | Featured Image by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

The deliverables for the conference project has been completed. I ran into a few hiccups while awaiting for approval from my mentor and supervisor for the finalized deliverables. Essentially, the client had expressed that she would like to receive the deliverables by April 10th. Despite having sent the finalized deliverables to my supervisor and mentor many days prior to the due date and following up with them, there was a lack of replies. I finally received a response on the morning of the due date from my supervisor who stated that the deliverables were OK for submission and only minor alterations were required for revision. I informed in an E-Mail response that I would send the updated drafts for a final round of revision and aimed to send the deliverables to the client before the end of the work day in a follow-up E-Mail, but received no response.

Because there were no updates and the client had expected the deliverables prior to the end of the workday, I was forced to finally make the decision of sending in the the revisions without going through a final round of revision.

Despite being praised by my supervisor for making the executive decision of sending in the deliverables into the client before the end of the workday, I feel that this experience was cutting it too close. I have determined that for future projects, I should follow up with my team more closely because it will not always be the case where the work I submit will be without issue. There could be things that I overlook that my team members may be able to spot. Thus, I have asked for the phone numbers of my team members, so that I could refer to them when there is a lack of E-Mail communications.

In hindsight, communication may be more effective if the team used tools such as Slack, Discord, or Google Teams. I feel that this opinion may be worth bringing up in the next status meeting.

Week 8: 3/19/2023–3/25/2023 | Featured Image by Vivian Li

For this week, I met with my new client and my mentor over Zoom. This new project is to promote the accomplishments of highly motivated and recognized students through a conference that welcomes faculty and students alike. I will be producing the following deliverables for a virtual student academic conference:

• Poster (11×17 – printed and PDF)

• Banner for the City Tech website

• Horizontal digital display monitor (1920×1080)

• Vertical digital display monitor (1080×1920)

The client informed me that it would be her first time working together with the team, so she was unfamiliar with how the workflow of things would be. With my mentor’s guidance, I explained that I would work on establishing the branding of the event first by working on the poster. Three different options will be produced for the client to choose from. But before these are sent to the client, it would first need to be approved by my supervisor and mentor. As such, it was agreed that the drafts would be sent to the client by next Thursday latest.

For the mascot project that I am finishing up on, that client had requested that I make some minor changes to the mascot poses as well as illustrating an additional pose similar to Uncle Sam’s “We Want You” pose. I have decided that instead of scraping the initial pose I had sent in, I would create a variation of it and keep it in the finalized poses as both are still usable depending on the context. This project will next be handed off to another one of my mentors who specializes in typography. The mascot illustrations are to be used on posters for the college’s liberal arts department.

Week 7: 3/12/2023–3/18/2023 | Featured Image by Vivian Li

During this week, I was able to successfully complete the illustration of the three poses for the mascot. While these poses were approved, the client expressed that he wanted to have at least two more poses that clearly expressed that the mascot was feeling excited and confused/lost. This should be no issue if I am able to organize my time appropriately.

On another note, in the prior week, I had a status meeting with my team. My supervisor mentioned the importance of sketching after coming from her own design team class. She spoke about how many of her students are evasive when it comes to sketching. They quickly jump to lining and coloring. I am guilty of this quality. In my attempt to correct this habit of mine, I reluctantly sketched out my the new poses for the mascot this week (see featured image above)

At the same time, my supervisor has assigned a new client to me. I will be working with the same mentor from my first project again. For this upcoming project, I will be working to produce the following deliverables:

• x1 digital flier

• x1 web banner

I will be working to create promotional materials for a student conference that promotes academic scholars within the college. I have reached out to the client along with my mentor and we are currently waiting to meet via Zoom this coming week.

It is unclear what environment the digital flier will be used in. I will have to keep this question in mind to ask during the meeting so that I can be mindful of the amount of text that should appear on the flier.

Week 6: 3/5/2023–3/11/2023 | Featured Image by Vivian Li

The finalized mascot design has been approved.

It has been decided that the mascot should express emotions to convey the following messages:

• Interested in having the perfect schedule?

• Sure the classes you need are available?

• Sure that the courses you’re thinking about are covered by Financial AID?

• Ready to take final exams and then enjoy the Summer without having to do something important later?

See featured image above for my attempt at illustrating the mascot (who has been affectionately nicknamed Techy Bear) nervously wondering if the classes he needs are available. Initially, I wanted to include text into each illustration I produce of the mascot. After some more thought, however, I have determined that doing so would limit its usage in the future. As a result, I have removed said text.

At the moment, I am only in charge of illustrating the mascot poses. One of the mentors will be responsible for incorporating my work onto informational posters and/or the college monitor displays.

My plan for now is to illustrate two more poses to see how the client feels about the project and whether or not he wants more work done for the mascot.

Week 5: 2/26/2023–3/4/2023 | Featured Image by Vivian Li

For this week, I worked to further develop the mascot for the client.

The client expressed that he has communicated with their supervisor and informed me that the supervisor felt that the most successful design would be the bear (see featured image above). Due to an increased workload from my other classes, however, I feel that I haven’t been able to accomplish as much for this week as I did for the previous project. The good news is that the project isn’t due until early April, but I would much prefer to finish the project quicker so that the client does not have to wait until last minute.

The previous draft of the design featured the bear without any sort of bottoms or shoes (see below). I decided to add these extra articles of clothing to the design (option 3) as per the client’s suggestion.

The next steps now are to wait for the client’s approval of the finalized mascot design before moving on to illustrate the different poses/emotions that would be appropriate for its upcoming use.

Week 4: 2/19/2023–2/25/2023 | Featured Image by Vivian Li

For this week, I have completed some options for the client to choose from for the mascot. While the college has an existing mascot (the yellow jacket), the client stated that he did not mind having the liberal arts department’s mascot be a different animal such as a lazy dog or some other sort of funny looking animal.

I opted to use a rabbit, dog, and a bear wearing a yellow jacket (a pun to college’s already existing mascot actual mascot). So far, the team has provided me with a lot of helpful feedback. Many of the members in my team expressed that they are partial to the rabbit design. In my own personal opinion, I feel that the dog is my favorite just because it happened to look the cutest. However, I ultimately believe that the bear is the most successful of the three designs as it clearly has the logo printed on the shirt. It is also representing the school with the yellow color of its jacket.

The drafts have been sent to the client, and I am currently waiting to hear back from him, who is waiting to hear back from the dean of the department. It will be interesting to hear back from them to see which design is chosen.

Week 3: 2/12/2023–2/18/2023 | Featured Image by Vivian Li

The final deliverables for my first project have been completed. It has been a busy week, so I was unfortunately unable to go see my monitor slides up on the college monitors, but I at least got to see my web banner up on the faculty commons website. Being able to see my work up on a website is very different from seeing it as a completed standalone PDF on an image/PDF viewer application. I feel like I’ve gained perspective. Although I have successfully completed the project, I should be mindful of the platform my work will be displayed on and the other content it will be in the company of.

Fortunately, I had two days of rest before I was assigned a new project. For the new project, I will be creating mascot graphics for the Liberal Arts and Sciences department. Unlike the previous project, this one does not have an immediate deadline. The client has suggested that the mascot for the department be a funny looking animal, and one of my mentors has asked that I illustrate an array of emotions for the mascot so that they can be reused on future posters for the department. I have decided to begin with some drafts of character designs for the client to choose from.

During the status meeting, I was able to receive helpful feedback from the team. While the drafts for the mascot were well received for the most part, one of the mentors who have experience with illustration kindly pointed out that I should be mindful of the proportions for the mascots. It’s hard to spot these faults when I am the one who is staring at my own work, so her feedback was much appreciated. I still have much to learn.

The next steps are to refine these drafts some more so that they can be sent to the client for approval.

Week 2: 2/5/2023–2/11/2023 | Featured Image by Vivian Li

During this week, I met with the client and my mentor to go over the deliverables for the project. I am working on a workshop that promotes and informs interested faculty members of how they may use an upcoming exhibit to enrich their students’ learning in the Fall 2023 semester. For this project, I have been tasked with producing 3 sets of deliverables:

• 1 poster for the E-Mail blast that will be sent out to the faculty

• 2 monitor slides for the college monitors (vertical and horizontal)

• 1 web banner for the faculty commons website

The meeting took place on Wednesday morning, and I was informed by the client that he would prefer to see drafts by the Friday of the same week as the E-Mail blast had to be sent out on the Tuesday morning of next week. This would mean that all deliverables must be approved by both the team as well as the client by Monday latest. The project is highly time-sensitive, so time management was one of the skills that I developed throughout this week.

On that same Wednesday, I had a status meeting with the team to discuss our progress. I shared my thoughts on the meeting thus far with the team and received feedback on how I should approach the project. My mentor also met with me after the status meeting, and I shared some rough drafts that I had come up with between meetings on that Wednesday. She offered feedback and suggestions as to how my layout can improve with minor changes.

I was hit with another roadblock, however, when I was informed that the client wanted three paragraphs of text to be included in the poster. I discussed my concerns with my mentor as I did not believe that a poster should be so text-heavy. Furthermore, the abundance of text would decrease readability of the poster as I would have to fit all elements (textual and graphic) into an A4 poster, which proved to be difficult. With some encouragement from my mentor, I eventually followed through and produced a few concepts for a very text-heavy poster.

As I am currently balancing the school work of a full-time student along with the internship, I was worried that I may not have enough time to complete both. After the client had decided on one of the few concepts presented to him, I proceeded to create the other deliverables.

My mentor and supervisor advised that I meet with them on Monday before sending any other drafts to the client. As such, my current priority is to complete all drafts for the deliverables so that I can receive feedback on Monday’s meeting.