Week 11

This week I worked 5 hours on Monday.

Total hours: 77 (<----three hours short of 80. Oh well)

This week was the last week of my internship at Sunny Hills. I gave my presentation about my experience and what I learned about graphic design work. My audience included my mentor Hannah, other Sunny Hills employees Pennell, Sandy, Elizabeth, the owner Joe Costa, and Mr. Wells. I was glad so many people came.
I talked about why I was there, what I did, the steps that went into my project, and what I learning about being a graphic designer. The presentation went really well. I had a keynote prepared and I felt like I spoke really well and everybody was congratulating me at the end. I found out that they will be using my brochure as is (NO CHANGES!) for the company. Once they are printed Hannah's going to mail me a bunch.
I'm sad my internship is over. But I'm glad I get to continue learning about graphic communications next year in college.

Week 10

This week I worked for 7 hours at Sunny Hills (I didn't read any of the book b/c I'm basically done with my design work)

Total hours so far: 72

This week I put in Hannah's edits for the brochure. This included small things, spelling fixes, and major rennovations on the content of the brochure. Everything looked good. So I called Derek of Strahm Communications to ask what I needed to do to make the file printer-ready. This was hard part. Derek's co-worker walked me through the process. I had to convert all the images from "RBG Color" mode to "CMKY" mode in Photoshop. Then I had to re-import them back into the InDesign document and make a folder of all the photos. Then I had to "package" the document meaning it was exported into f older with all the fonts and links used in it. There were some complications but I sent it through anyways. Then I had to upload the folder with the fonts, links, photos, and the actual document to Strahmcom.com but in order to do so I had to compress the folder to a ".zip" so that it could all be sent through. It was difficult but Derek says that he has a ll the necessary peices and he'll get back to us.
I also visited Elizabeth with Hannah to make sure their projector would work with my mac for the presentation next week.

Week 9

This week I worked 7 hours at Sunny Hills and read the book for 2 hours at home.

Total hours so far: 65

This weak I completed the Marin Academic Center brochure. That means all the design work and the content. I am really happy because the principle of MAC as well as the owner of Sunny Hills, and the main graphic designer for Sunny Hills, all like my brochure design a lot. Their only sugesstion was to add a pic or 2 of older kids because MAC is a k-8 school and the brochure only included elementary school kids. I did this but my mentor also made the sugegestion that we do 2 brochures and split them as a k-5 audience brochure and a 6-8 audience brochure (obviously I won't have to make both because I won't have enough time). Because of this new idea I have 2 final brochures - the original with only little kid photos and a new one that includes a shot of middle-school aged students. Here they are:

Design 1 (With only little kids)

Design 2 (With one pic of older kids)

The formating is like this: Flap 3 is the cover, Flap 2 is the back, Flap 1 is what you first see when you open up the cover. Flap 6 is behind flap 1. Flaps 4 and 5 are the inside. So the brochure is two-sided and is a tri-fold brochure. As you can see the second page is the same for both designs.

Week 8

This Monday I worked 7 hours and spent 2 hours throughout the week reading the Adobe InDesign Book. I also came in on Friday to catch up for about 6 hours.

Total hours so far: 53

On Monday I finished up the design work on the brochure. Some things still need a bit of tweaking but I'm fairly satisfied. On Friday I began work on the "copy" or the actual content of the brochure. I made titles for the 4 major sections on the inside flap and wrote the description under one of them.

I think what I like best about working as a graphic designer is how you get to pretty much play all day. You are creating an art form and you get to play around with what you like and don't like in your design. Obviously its fun because you are working with something that is aesthetically pleasing. You are given the opportunity to create the "face" of a company or program. It is your job to make sure that they are remembered. It's cool cause you can take ideas from all sorts of places and let them inspire your design work. Every single man-made object on this earth has design elements to it so the possibilities are endless. I also like that the job opportunities for graphic designers are fairly broad. You can work for a design firm that gets hired by outside companies to do design work for them or you can work as the "graphic designer" for any company and do all the design work for any marketing projects they have.

Week 7

On Monday I worked 7 hours and on Sunday Night I read the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium for Dummies for one hour.

Total hours so far: 38

Hannah and I have decided that my presentation will take place on Monday April 14th at Sunny Hills. The development office will be moving later this week to a portable so I would give my presentation either in there or in the conference room back in the main office. We haven't picked a time yet so I guess we will just schedule it around what works best for Mr. Wells. Sunny Hills has a projector that I could set up for my keynote presentation.

This week I worked on finalizing three cover designs. I got some feedback from Hannah, then turned the files into PDF format and emailed them to Joe (the boss) to review. After that I started working on the inside design for one of the 3 covers.

Week 6

This Monday I worked a 7-hour day and spent an hour at home reading about how to use Adobe InDesign™.

Total Hours so far: 30

In response to this weeks prompt, this is what my mentor had to say:

Did you choose your line of work or fall into it circumstantially?

I fell into it somewhat circumstantially, although I did make choices along the way. I think that I have always enjoyed more creative endeavors, and that marketing and communications can be very creative undertakings. So I guess it was my skills and interests combined with the jobs that I happened to get.

What kind of education was necessary to enter your career?

I studied English at UC Berkeley, and I also have a background in yearbook editing and took classes after college in web and graphic design programs. I think that a lot of people start out with more focus on marketing and communications than I had, and really pursue those things in college, but I just studied reading and especially writing, which has been tremendously helpful in all of my communications work.

What were the milestones on your professional journey?

The first job that I had in marketing and communications was with a tech startup company. That was where I really cut my teeth and learned through experience about managing an entire marketing/communications program - website, advertising, branding, messaging, communications, the whole thing. Getting promoted at that job was a very big deal, and was really my first true professional milestone. When I came to Sunny Hills, I was moving to the nonprofit world and actually thought that I would be moving away from marketing, but ended up taking on a lot of those same responsibilities in my new job. The big milestone here was deciding to make the move into fulltime marketing and communications (previously I did most of my work in fund development).

This week we finalized my project. I will be making a brochure about one of Sunny Hills' programs called The Marin Academic Center. It's an elementary for troubled students which helps them mainstream back in 'regular' school. Today I made possible cover designs as a navigated my way through InDesign™. Here they are:

Week 5

Unfortunately I was unable to go to my internship this week because my mentor's mother was having surgery. I am starting to worry about not having a full 80 hours by the end of this process. My mentor was supposed to email me some work to do today so I could still could hours but I never received an email and she is now out of the office so I was unable to contact her in time. I had a mailer she gave me to review which I spent a few hours on so I was only able to could 2 hours this week.

Total hours so far: 22

I also am worried about what my project will be now. Because it doesn't look like the newsletter is going to work. I have been working on the layout for some inserts in a folder about Sunny Hills. This could end up being part of a final project. Maybe I could do a few more little projects and them put them together for my final presentation. I just hope I have enough time.

Weeks 3/4

Over break I went to Sunny Hills on Friday for 6 hours. And this Monday I worked for 7 hours.

Total hours so far: 20

On Friday Hannah and I finally got to work together for the first time. She let me choose between 2 design project because she is not ready to start the newsletter. I chose to redo the layout/ write summaries for bookmark inserts describing each of the 8 programs offered through Sunny Hills. They are adding 2 more which needed a whole new insert created as well as a summary description for the back. I re-designed the formatting of the inserts while teaching the program Adobe InDesign to myself. I also created the 2 new ones and wrote one paragraph summaries after ready large brochures on each program.
On Monday I continued work on this project I messed around with color altering which was really hard to figure out. The inserts are meant to be stacked upon each other and each one gets shorter on the stack so they are layered you can read the titles. And they wanted the value (they are all green) to get lighter as you go down. So that's what I worked on. Then I met Paul for lunch at the Civic Center. It was pretty. When I came back I was supposed to go on a tour of the campus with Hannah and a perspective student, but that got canceled. I ordered 2 copies of the book InDesign for Dummies for Hannah and I so we can learn it together. Then didn't have much else to do so I read The Great Gatsby.
My project is still on hold because Hannah has to finish the annual report first. In fact my project my be changed because the newsletter could get pushed back too far. I hope it doesn't though. After getting some experience with InDesign I really wanna do more advanced stuff with it.
In terms of the politic in the office, I mainly notice that within the Development office there are many different divisions or titles. So people are often off doing their own thing. For example, my mentor is in charge of marketing while the person she shares her office with does fundraiser event planning. Obviously I have figured out that the owner of Sunny Hills is at the top of the ladder and has final say on everything.

Week 2

This Monday I worked from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm for a total of 7 hours this week.

Total Hours So Far: 7

This week I knew that my mentor, Hannah would be out of the office again because of jury duty. Her service is ending this week so I will see her next week. She had me come into the office anyways so as to not get behind on my hours. I came in at ten and worked with Hannah's associates Sandy, Pennell, and Sandy's son-to-be- replacement when she retires, Eva. They were all very nice, although they didn't have much for me to do without Hannah there. Sandy introduced me to everyone at the office and gave me a small tour. Pennell had me make and attach 300 address labels to mail flyers about an upcoming golf tournament fundraiser. This took me into lunch. Sandy bought lunch for the four of us which was incredibly nice! We walked down to the Red Hill Shopping Center and ate at the Easy Street Cafe. I had a crab cake sandwich (delicious!). When we got back They had me read about Sunny Hills along with some recent developments in the organization. I got a free coffee mug and T-Shirt, then spent the rest of the day filing. It was a nice first day. Sunny Hills is closed on Presidents Day so I plan to try and go in on a different day over break to make up hours.
My project is on a hiatus until I can work with Hannah. She is anxious to begin the newsletter so as soon as I work with her we will get started. Luckily I already have a project set up.
The environment at Sunny Hills is very nice. the people there are very laid back. You can wear jeans and even bring your dog to work (because the location is so gorgeous/ dog-friendly). Kids are always walking past the building on there way to activities or classes and the offices are very close together. I have my own office which is cool but its right next to Hannah's which is helpful. There is a kitchen down the hall with a fridge, microwave, hot water, coffee, place to eat inside, and a place to eat outside. All the employees are very open and kind (understandable if they work at a non-profit that helps troubled youth). I am glad to be working there.

Week 1

This week I was unable to attend my internship because my mentor, Hannah, had jury duty. I will therefore begin my internship next Monday on the 11th. Because I already had my internship set up but was unable to attend, I stayed home for the day. If I went to school it would have been useless because everyone there would be looking for internships. I had a nice time sleeping in and getting some homework done (I read 90 pages of The Golden Ratio!).
As it stands I already know what my project will be and I will probably spend a majority of my internship working on that project. I am to help design and produce Sunny Hill's seasonal newsletter for the spring of 2008. I will be solely responsible for two pages of the newsletter. This includes not only design work but photography, periodical writing, interviewing, etc.
I guess you could say what surprised me my first week was that I wouldn't be going to my internship on the first day! Hopefully I will enjoy it when I start next week. Also, I spent part of the day walking my yellow-lab Haley to the park, which is only a block or two from my house. I guess she had to go "number 2" really bad because started to "relieve herself" in the middle of the road as we were crossing the street. As cars drove around her with a look of utter disgust and confusion I buried my face in my hand. This was the second most surprising (and embarrassing) moment of my day. I think the worst part was signaling for cars to stop as I cleaned it up with a Ziploc bag.

Week Zero

I have my internship set up for next Monday. I will be working in the Development/Marketing Department at non-profit organization Sunny Hills Services. Sunny Hills provides community-based services to children ages 5-18 who are considered emotionally disturbed. This means that they could have been neglected or abused as children or have gone through a traumatic experience. I will be working with my mentor, Hannah Heller on designing and compiling their seasonal newsletter. I will be solely responsible for the graphic design, photography and articles on 2 pages of the newsletter. This project is expected to take all 10 weeks of the internship. I will have to learn the program iDesign. Along with the rest of the upper division, I will begin on February 4th.