cogent solutions

Saturday, August 19, 2006

this blog is done now. see

for something more interesting.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

theLast

this is the end. last friday was my last day with ema. the wierd thing was it didn't feel any different from the other days. except, i had more work to do. i had to make alot of dummies for the kodak mailers. and then i had to design an identity mailer. the identity piece was similar to the BMA insert in the sense that they both we're self promotion pieces. this took a majority of the day with all the designing, getting feedback, designing, getting feedback, more designing, and more feedback. at the end of the day martin gave me a company pen, that was engraved with ema logo, and told me that they really apreciated my time with them and to keep in touch.
i think i've learned alot from this whole experience. before doing this i never really knew when corporate b2b advertising was, because as a consumer, you don't see it. i enjoyed working with the creative team. it was really different than how things work at school where you only have yourself as a resource. another thing i learned was there are alot of onbetween people on decision making. it makes things take way longer than they should.
here is my last thought on the whole.

finalization

finish it. this week was about doing that. previous projects such as the BMA insert and the duck needed to be done. so thats what we did this week. the BMA insert turned out suprisingly well. even though the back seemed very cramped at first the overall flow of the piece is comfortable and it doesn't seem so overbearing. martin wasn't here today so i worked with rob more than i usually do. rob seems to have more on his plate in a sense hes always on the phone talking about different jobs and giving feedback to photographers and illustrators. later that day rob and i were talking about different thing like different type of design and stuff. we started talking about after effects and he pull up this page called Planet in Need, and he began explaining how the page was mostly done in after effects.
i've been going to this same sandwich place since i've started at mower. they make the best sandwiches i have ever tasted. i'd drop a name in here but i would betcher the spelling. anyway, so i've been goin there so much that they know me by name and i have a 'usual' meal there. it's pretty cool. i thought that kind of stuff only happens on television.

BMA inserts.

The other week I spent most of my time working on the Mower BMA binder inserts. The purpose of the insert is to act as a promotional display piece in their corporate binder displaying their work from their most natable clients. I learned something very interesting while working on this assignment. You need alot of people to say okay before its really okay. The original idea for this insert was for it to be a one (printed on both sides) piece have a third page text on the tops and then example images on the bottom. in theory this layout worked. once i started porting pdfs onto the page it became aparent that they weren't all going to fit. i did my best putting them all on the page I pased it off to martin who then passed it off to about seven other people who all need to either put their initials on it (meaning it was okay) or red pen alot of it. Well it got back to me clad in red pen but no due to my treatment but rather the intructions that i was given on the page. This made me wonder 'why not have all these people with red pens get together and decide how they want it to look before passing it off to the resposible creative? well aparently that isn't how it works. anyway, i get it back and the new idea it to put all the type on the front and the examples on the back. oh, and put descritpions with the examples. now this sound like a good idea, but in actuaility this give you an overabundance of room for the front type and an extreme crunch where the example work is going. well i did it anyway but by the time it was ready to get everyones opinion most everyone had left. guess it'll have to wait for next week.

Monday, April 17, 2006

duckBinder

design a duck. this was my first task for the day. every year mower is involved with the race against racism duck race. the idea is that we have to take a plastic duck and dress it up, paint it, 'design' it, do whatever. its mostly for fun, but what we have to keep in mind is that mower is a corporate sponsor of the race. i spent the morning drawing and concepting then i went to lunch. after lunch i was assigned to work on the layouts for the mower insterts for our corporate binder. this assignment is kinda a big deal for me because its going to be seen by alot of clients. so i work on this til about for then martin tells me that the creative team is going to be having happy hour in the atrium. so we all went out and socialized and i got to tlak to more of the designers in creative. it was alot of fun.

typeHere

heres a post. the other day at mower i spent most of the day working on a typographic logo for the 'greater syracuse chamber of commerce 2006 business of the year.' the logo would be put on the print ads and possibly the billboards in syr. i was excited to get this assignment because of the amount of exposure it would recieve (even though no one will really know who did it!). along with the logo i work on making dummies for the kodak mailer. we got the pocket folder all together and were just waiting on the inside pages and then we looked at it and realized that it wasn't laid out correctly! the pocket was on the wrong side. so the gDesigner had to go back reDesign the pages and print out another mock. by this point it was almost fivePM (quarter of to be exact) and we were all just about ready to go home. i got the newly printed pages cut and set but i didn't get to see it completed before i left.

what i got out of this was a realization of how important it really is to make the dummies and the mockups. if we had just sent the files to the printers as is the agancy could have lost the client or possibly been sued (i'm not really sure on the law part...).
so remember, all those seemingly pointless printouts are saving thousands of your clients dollars, and your reputaion.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

SotA [state of the agency]

"i'm not even suposed to be here today" it's tuesday and i've been called in by martin to attend the annual state of the agency meeting. this is a yearly meeting where eric mower himself comes to us with news facts and other various bits of information and life lessons regaurding the agency and its progress. it was two hours long and there was buffet breakfast things like delicous quieche and breakfast sandwiches. when filling myself a cup of juice a man looks to me and says "hi there, i don't believe we've met yet." it was eric mower! i immediatley recognize who is speaking to me and i say hello my name is jesse ______, the creative intern. we tlak about what i do, where i'm from and those kinds of things. it was kinda thrilling to know it was me he was tlaking to. eric got up and spoke on whjat he does for the agency, and other things he does. all i could think about is that one part in office space where the bobs are asking "what exactly do you do here" and the guy responds by saying i work with the people so the techncians don't have to! im a people person dammit! what the hell is wrong with you people" not that erics explanation was naything like that, but thats what came to mind. after the state i went back to school only to dicover i had missed my next class. fortunately my professor was out as well.

anotherDay

it's been a while since i have posted something. my appologies. todays post takes place the week before last btween the hours of eightAM and sixPM. this was a busy day for me. upon arival i checked in with rob and martin to see what they had for me to do that day. rob said little, martin however had a list. a plethora to do's and meetings and this list was only up to lunch.
my nine:thirty consisted of a briefing with matt from pr on our media boards in the atrium. what he needed from me was one for this current occasion. i was given the media and materials for the board and began construction. while in the process of this i was pulled into prepping p&s mailers for an upcoming event. the mailers were these tubes with a toy car and and some type of plug device i'm not entirely familiar with. the purpose of these mailers was they were to serve as invites for an upcomming pressentation and weekend at the races. there was four of us working on this assigment but it still seemed to take some time.
mid process came time for my ten:thirty breifing with martin and two other æ. the brief was for the upcomming ih/mrs. this was the first intial briefing i have sat in on for a large scale job. the other briefs were wip briefs so it was cool to interact with the initial stages of recieving the jobs and moving through the whole process.
after the brief it was back to working on the mailers. at this point i am the only one working on getting these mailers ready to send out. eventually don came along to help with production and things started to pick up. getting the mailers together brought us to about onePM and it was time for lunch.
i went to the sandwich place i've been going to the past couple of times simply because its the closest and the sandwiches are amazing. i bring my lunch back and sit in the atrium and enjoy my surroundings. there are briefings taking place, clients are in observing progress and other people just engaging in converstaion or having lunch as well.
the day always seems to drag a little after lunch. i go back to working on the pr board. i enjoy this because i get to use the neat mounting thing they have. you slide the paper through this roll thingy and i comes out sandwiched between this plastic wrap and a brown paper. you peel off the plastic and the brown and the paper is sticky and ready to be mounted. this sure beats spray glue. once i get the board done i call up matt and he comes over and takes a look at it, i get his aproval and he takes off to get it posted.
i'm reading over the brief from the meeting earlier with martin and i start seeing these words in contexts i haven't read before. i start highlighting and then go to ask martin what they mean. as it turns out i learned something:
•exhibitor solicitation materials - these are the things that are sent out to prospective atendees of a specific event (items include brochure, informational packet, but genereally in postcard form).
• prospectus - A document describing the chief features of something, such as a business, an educational program, or especially a stock offering or mutual fund, for prospective buyers, investors, or participants.
• horizontal showcasing - oppose to vertical (obviously), when a show contains sellers from an entire spectrum with specific influence in a specific profession. an example of this would be in the hotel/hospitality business at a horizontal show you would have tables for cutlery, bedding, caitering, etc.
i later spoke with martin a little about his relation with design outside ema. his response was that he doesn't really find the time to do his own design work between going to the gym, working and sleeping. but he loves his television.
the day was coming to an end and i did what i always do around that time. i go talk to rob and see what hes doing. rob has been working on a motorolla commercial since i've been internign and so i've been able to see the progress from near the beginning of the assigning. the shoot was nigh so today he was researching wardrobe. he then passed this on to me where i was researching wardrobe for the shoot. this was fun because i got to look at fashion websites and search for waht would be ideal for the shoot.
today was a good day. but kinda busy. i'm tired.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

dayTwo

friday was another good day at the office. i spoke with steven and continued working on the packaging for the kodak job. it's hard to keep up with projects when i only come in once a week. i miss out on briefings and client meetings so i don't get the feedback on what we're doing directly from the client. another problem is that i'll end up doing alot of things out of the office to keep up. after a while another member of creative [i'm assuming] came to me with an ad to work on. it was for some box cutting blades or something like that. what she needed me to do was change colors and corrected a few other things like replace the photos. that didn't take long at all so i sent it back to her and continued on with the kodak job. lunch came around and i went to that awesome sandwhich place rob took me to last week. when i got back the team was haveing some kind of party for someone. there was cake and all the bells and whistles one would expect. i sat in on a creative meeting about a broche and a series of ads that are being done [for i forget who]. it was interesting to see how creative operates in discussions about eachothers work and how problems get solved. near the end of the day i went into robs office just to see what hes been up to and he explained to me the entire process hes been going through with the motorolla job. it sounds like a very high stress job but he gets to do alot of awesome things. he travels alot and gets to work with other great designers artists and photographers on a daily basis. would i want his job? yes.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

dayOne

friday was my first day with the agency, and it was amazing. to start i'll tell you that i got through 4 street lights on the blvd before getting a red (which saved me ten minutes at least) on my way there. i didn't even get lost. once i got there i found a parking spot right in front of the building and made my way into the building. i got off on the wrong floor from the elevator and got confused and ran back in. i bet i looked pretty dumb. i finally got onto the right floor and went up to the scretary and told her that i was here and to let rob know. rob then greeted me and led me to meet with another creative director who would be showing me around today (i can't remember his name right now which is terrible because he is probably the person i spoke with the most on friday) [edit] his name is Martin [/edit]. he first showed me where i would be working. i have my own office like thing right next to him and rob. he then introduced me to everyone on their floor (which was alot of people). we eventually made our way to the kitchenette where i saw the largest collections of bagels outside of a store. there had to of been about eleven bags that had at least two dozen in each bag. i also got to see the office of Eric Mower (the big cheese). he also pointed out this interesting painting that is above the front desk that looks like people sitting at a table hitting eachother with plungers. after all this he led me back to my office and gave me alot of paper work to fill out and a booklet 'guide' for being an intern which basically told me what i should know about the network and whats cool and what isn't. my first assignment was to make a creative bio or about me kinda thing that would be posted around the office and on the network. martin got a new computer today, one of the new MacBook pro laptops and it looks awesome. once lunch time came around rob took me out to this really good sandwich place down the street and bought me lunch i wasn't expecting it but i was very greatful when he did (considering one sandwich was like seven dollars). we went back to the office and ate in this huge room with all these tables and huge windows. once i was done eating i went back to my computer and another creative director named steven came to me and asked me if i would be interested in designing packaging for a few different types of consumer products. the reason they need this is for a brochure theyre putting together for kodak printing devices. they need to demonstrate that they can maintain color consistency between different types of materials and things like that. i'm really excited about this because once i design the labels they will be sent out and made into real bottles/boxes/cans/etc and photographed, then put into the brochure. so i started looking at thing on getty (thats where they told me to look and whatever i saw on their that i wanted to use they would buy the rights to) time flew by on friday. before i knew it it was quarter after five and martin told me i could go.
the creative team seems really cool. rob is a really nice guy. he told me about how he got his start with ema and how he met his wife. at work hes on the phone alot with clients and running back and forth working on things with the creative team. martin seems like a laid back cool kinda guy. i have a feeling i'll probaly be seeing him the most while im there but just on my first day i've been meeting alot of people that i will be working on various projects with. steven seems like a cool guy as well and i'm looking forward to working with him on the kodak project.
on the way home i went the wrong way on 690 and ended up in a neighboring town ( a half hour away). so i didn't back to campus til about sevenish. i missed dinner at the cafe so i went to mcDonalds. delicious (haha).

Monday, February 27, 2006

newDevelopment

hey again, so it took about 3 weeks for them to get back to me [in a week] but it finally happened! rob, the one of the guys i met with called me personally to tell me that they want me to come in and start working with their creative team this friday. it's a good thing i decided to get early today. he called me at 8:30 which is also the time they want me to come in on friday. so much for sleeping in. but in all seriousness this is a huge sigh of relief for me because here i was thinking that i am a bad designer and they weren't going to call me back. it started making me question my other work i was doing and all around making me go crazy [on the inside]. now i'm really excited to see what the rest of their team is like and who i'll be working with. aparently they take multiple interns so i'll be working with other students which i think is really cool as well. the only thing i'm not looking forward to is the drive there. i know i'm going to get lost again.