Networking Event 2

Mishy Cass is a creative director in Seattle and he spent twenty years of her career working at different AD Agencies in the west coast. For the past three years she has been a group creative direction for a company called REI.

In this event she spoke about ‘creativity.’ Mishy says “everyone is creative and that is what makes us individuals but somewhere along the line we all are taught to believe we are not creative.”

Mishy realizes that she felt the happy, creative and where she shines, is outside the lines and not conforming to the norms of being creative.  The most random ideas are the best ideas that can be shared with clients and most likely they will be interested in. She says “the question is how do you take all the random thoughts and connect the dots and make it into something? How do you take random thoughts and bring them to life?” This is the trickiest part of being a creative in an agency or client side.

Mishy begins to say when working agency side it is more like a sprint. She compares it to a race. The processes has a beginning, middle and an end. Everyone in the group is all working on something the finish line. Working client side is like running a marathon, it is more slow paced sometime the path and leaders tend to change. Sometimes darning the process you are not sure if you are at the end because there might be another part to the project .

The creative directions that succeed in working client side are the type of people without an ego, very collaborative and open-minded. It’s a long term commitment. Every minute of the day is planned out with meetings. Most of the time the meetings had nothing to do with the work. It’s more of the business side of things. She realizes that the more you learn the business aspect of things, the better you are at coming up with creative solutions and problem solving.

I learned that things aren’t always what they seem. Working hard can only get you part of the way when you are working in a team. The team must feel motivated, excited, inspired and over all happy to get the best possible outcome. Team work is very powerful when the individuals work as a team to get things done. You do your best work when you are more passionate.

Networking Event 1

In this networking event, I learned how to build a great portfolio.

The first thing that I learned was that a portfolio is forever whether it be a physical print portfolio on an online portfolio. So when you create one you should always keep improving it no matter what. You can create new content and projects and update your portfolio. Your resume and your portfolio isn’t the same. Your resume goes to human resources so make sure your portfolio shows who you are.

If you are not familiar with how to create and code your own website don’t try it out now because it will only make it more difficult for you the more you add. Stick you using a template website to make it easier on yourself and you can just worry about putting the time into creating a nice aesthetic.

When creating your portfolio just remember, its like going on a date, you want to make a great first impression. Your first page (the homepage) should say “This is who I am and this is what I want to do.” Ex. I am a designer… but I love illustration.

Have a great photographer take a picture of you, a photo that expressed you and also says you are ready to work.  Let’s say you don’t have a photographer to take you picture,  you can have a friend take a picture of you and edit a background that you like into the photo. Next is the about page. When creating an about page it should really be about you! For example, You can state your name, where you are from, where you graduated from or where you are attending school, your passions, things you like to do. Something that makes you different, something that makes you who you are. As a designer, what is it you would like someone that is going to hire you to know. What is your superpower?

Your portfolio should be a simple layout with a white background so it looks clean and organized. Put you best works first because sometimes all of your work will not get seen. Here are some examples.

PAY ATTENTION TO DETAILS!!!

For example:

1. Spelling/ Grammar
2. Bad typeface (no comic sans, brush script)
3. Inconsistant design
4. lack of aesthetic
5. corny copy
6. Understating(be proud of what you have done with out bragging)

A passion project is an excellent way to make you stand out above the ‘logical’ creative projects. Think out of the box, those are usually the best ideas!

Overall, I learned that your portfolio should be clean and something someone would enjoy looking through. If someone saw your portfolio what is different that makes yours special.

APP REVIEW 1

The app that I will be reviewing is called Hootsuite.

Hootsuite is platform where you can manage your different social media accounts. Hootsuite is very helpful to manage online brands and different companies. This system allows you to post and control you different account like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Youtube. This is especially great for companies that want to make managing their social media much more easier and accessible under one umbrella.

This company was founded by a man named Ryan Holmes in 2008. Hootsuite’s headquarters are located in Vancouver, Canada. They have nearly 1,000 staff member on board in 13 locations.

HOOTSUITE OFFICE

By Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Scalable Grid Engine – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81408311

Hootsuite is pretty easy to use once you set up your account. There is a Free, Pro, Team, Business and Enterprise version. So there is something for everyone. I like using this platform because I can upload to different social media accounts it allows you to multitask and complete other work as well.

THE HOMEPAGE

SIGNUP PAGE

LOGIN PAGE

DIFFERENT PLANS

Journal Six

Coronavirus aka Covid-19 has not only have an effect on school but also with my internship as well. Being that my internship is located at City Tech, classes and my internship is being move online and will be working remotely. It is a little different working from home. Instead of communicating face to face as well as through email the main source of communication is through email. I have a new workspace that is set up at home. I have my own workspace now.

For my internship, I am responsible for uploading to Student Life and Developments social media site via Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows me to access their facebook, instagram and twitter accounts so that I can post new event and workshops for students to attend.  At this time all the events are not on campus they are hosted online via Zoom.

Journal Five

My first assignment is to create a flyer for one of the workshops that will be held at the school. I am in charge of creating the flyer and posting about it on their social media sites. At this workshop there will be a keynote speaker and her name is Dorothy Doppstadt. She goes to different CUNY colleges to speak about different topic that affect college students. She is a certified career coach and also a professor at Columbia University. This workshop is about how you can the stress out of  stressful conversations. This should be a good workshop. I worked on this flyer for two weeks editing the info and other and this is what we decided on going with for the flyer.  We needed to get the flyer out as fast as possible so that there was time to get prints done to be posted up around the school and also to post on the social media platform for the students to know about it.

Journal Four

Here at Student Life and Development the environment is easygoing. The dress code isn’t really strict I normally wear jeans and  shirt, so it’s real casual. Student Life has a main office and then some of the staff have their own space. I sometimes stay in the main office but most of the time I share the one of the office spaces with the staff member I was paired to work with. Im glad that I was because when ever I have any questions he is the best person for me to ask.

I created my own schedule for me to be at the office based on my school and work schedule during the week. For the most time I was there on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I was able to take my lunch break when I was ready as long as I informed someone that I was going on a lunch break. My break was 45 minutes to an hour long. So for example, on a Wednesday I start at 10:00am – 4:00pm, the around 1:00pm I would take my break.

This a picture of some of the staff and people that keep Student Life and Development running smoothly.

Journal Three

This is the second and a half-ish week since I started my internship and it is just the beginning of my internship. My role within Student Life and Development is to create  advertisements and promote their events through print and using their social media platform (ie. posting up flyers around school, also on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.) I am also responsible for running errands for the office when ever they need me to. I am so excited to start on different projects but I have not yet received anything to do yet. Hopefully I get to do something soon because I am starting to get bored.

If you were wondering, “How did you get this internship with Student life and Development?”  Well here’s how it happened. I attended a Leadership Retreat last semester that was hosted by Student Life. I decided that it would be a good opportunity for me if I went on this retreat. In a nutshell, you learned how to become a better leader,  improving your communication skills and to encourage others around you. After the retreat I learned so much. I decided that I would take my chances and a few weeks before this semester started I asked the manager of the office if they were accepting interns and I gave her my resume. I got a call a week later to have a meeting. Two weeks later, I got a call that I got the internship.

Vanessa Villanueva, theManager of the Office of Student Life and Development, is a very nice woman and she was the person that interviewed me and also directed me to the person that I will  be working closely with in the office. Vanessa went through and Informed me  what my role is and how I can help outside of that as well.