During this internship I definitely met someone who I would consider my role model. My Boss/Supervisor/Friend Alex M. Alex started this company back in 2008, he’s only 28 years old and has an established company with an amazing reputation. Just working with Alex and seeing the way he handles business has taught me many things that I have used on my own. There have been situations with clients that I wouldn’t have known how to handle without him. He has a lot of wisdom and expertise when it comes to being your own boss. When you have your own business its often hard to charge your friends for your work, Alex has given me a different perspective on the whole situation. He taught me that if they are your friends they should want to pay you, they should want to support you in what you do. He also showed me the correct ways to handle your employees. He showed me how to be a good friendly boss but still retain the authority that you want. You want your employees to not only like you but to respect you. Honestly I am really happy that Alex was my boss and I had the opportunity to work with him because I wouldn’t want to have learned from anyone else.

This weeks project was to re-design the “custom headlights” section of the website. This part of the website before was a little confusing so we wanted to create something that would be a little more user friendly. We wanted to eliminate the number of questions we get over the phone by making this section have all the main answers. We wanted to have a breakdown of packages and the different types of things that each package offers. We also wanted to showcase some of the advantages our lights have over regular headlights. Finally we wanted to have an informational section on how to maintain and repair your headlights in case there was any issues. We worked out some designed but the one we liked the most was a simplistic scroll design that many websites are switching over to. This single scroll page would allow the viewer to get all the information he needed with just a scroll. We picked the 3 Main topics and broke the single scroll page down into those 3 sections.

I can safely say since I have been working here my work ethic has greatly improved. I find myself using my time very wisely. Once a project is given to me I spend all my time on it. I pace myself working on it, I want to complete it fast, but I don’t want to do a bad job. In the begging Ill admit I did not use my time as best as I could have. Since then I have learned way better time management. Aside from that I have developed even better relationship skills. I learned the proper ways to speak with clients. Sometimes the customer is not always right, but you cannot tell them that, so you have to work your way around that. There is different ways to handle different situations. This internships has definitely helped me learn some of these ways.

Overall I think I would give myself a pretty good evaluation. I did what I was supposed to do, sometimes I even exceeded that. I feel like just because you did the bare minimum that doesn’t mean you did a good job. Sometimes you have to go above and beyond even if you are not instructed to do so.

Today was an interesting day, we had a client come in from Remax Reality. He was interested in getting a vehicle wrap. He wanted to do something that would make his ordinary work bwm x5 more interesting. After the client spoke with our boss and main designer, we had a meeting to discuss possible ideas for this car. The owner of the company didn’t want to just do a traditional advertising of his company. He wanted to do it in a clever way. We knew the owner was a fan of BMWs because he suggested that he wanted the car to have a Pace car look. If you don’t know what a Pace car is, it is a car that sets the pace and positions racers for a rolling start in a warm-up lap or laps before a race, or that returns to control the pace in temporarily hazardous conditions.

After a good meeting we came up with a very clean design that still got the company name across. The base color of the car was white, the vinyl that we added on top of the car would be the traditional BMW colors. The head designer/vinyl wrapper and myself worked on some ideas on illustrator to see how we can best get the company name across. We decided on positioning the logo right on the side of the car. We would have the “pace car” decals going from the hood up and over the roof line back to the trunk. We even did small race car like details such as including the owner’s name on the side of the door which is seen on real race cars. Here are some images of the completed project.

So my first assignment on the job was pretty simple. I guess my boss was starting me off easy. I just had to photograph some headlights that we worked on and design a simple way to showcase them on our flickr. Luckily we have a light box so that made my photography job much easier. I started of by taking photos of the headlights, showing all the different functions they can do. Demon eyes, Iron Man lights and halos. Once I took all the photos of the headlights that I needed I imported them on my computer and started to edit them. After the images where edited I brought them into Photoshop and started to crop just the headlight out, so that there wasn’t any background.

Now my boss already had a way that he had his headlights posted on flickr, and he wanted to maintain the same style. Unfortunately he did not have the files he was using previously so i had to replicate everything from scratch. I spent time looking for fonts that matched the font the person was using. Finally I found it and was able to produce the type of image my boss was looking for. Here are some of those completed images that I took and put together.

This semester I was blessed with the opportunity to be able to work for OneightyNYC. Oneighty is an automotive shop that specializes in vehicle customization. We work on anything from vehicle headlights to complete color changes on cars. Clients come to us with their ideas and we make them a reality. The company is located in Coney Island, and we also have another facility in Qatar. The facility in Coney Island is our main location and that is the one that I work for. Currently including myself the company has 12 employees. Our company is a public business, which means anyone is more than welcome to come in and get work done on their vehicle. Most of our clients are automotive enthusiasts and/or business owners who need to make their vehicles pop. 

Oneighty was founded in 2008, since that day we have worked on thousands of vehicles and special projects. My position in the company would be as a Creative. I would be in charge of creating interesting marketing content, brochures, flyers, social media posts, vehicle designs, photography and working on the website. Our shop was voted as one of the best 9 shops in New York. You can read the article here. They talk highly of our company, saying that we utilize the latest technology. They touch upon some vehicles that we specialize on which includes BMW’s and Infiniti’s. Its a good feeling knowing I am working for one of the best shops in all of New York.