 I feel like I’ve made a meaningful contribution to my workplace because I have helped create a few designs for clients, so I got some work off of some designers.
Most importantly I have also helped my mentor with his own skills. I feel like he gained sort of a ‘refresher’ of his skills by teaching me how to do certain things, he mentioned that he hadn’t used a lot of the editing techniques since a long time. Although yes, he does have 20 years of experience, being able to teach someone something will strengthen their own skills. Also, a couple of the editing tools I wanted to learn more about he wasn’t quite familiar with. Along the way, he was learning how to use them as well by the research we would do and learn together. We kind of helped each other. Something else that stood out to me is the contribution to him I made as a “contact” or how he will see me in the future. He mentioned to me a super cool project he was working on, but that he needed help to create a drawing for a design. I felt honored that he thought of me as an artist that could help him and team up to create something for a client. He had also mentioned that he will reach out to me if he ever needs my help with anything. I am really glad that I have made the “impression” or that he knows me like that in a professional way. That he sees my potential and what I can offer as an artist and that it could be useful in the future. That is why I feel like I have made a contribution to the resources he has as a designer.
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 In the most recent blog post I mentioned I met Ruben in the lunchroom. He talked to me about his “art career” and he began with graphic design. He said he started as an artist drawing portraits (which are amazing). Then he looked into graphic design and learned how to do it and realized it’s something that interested him as well and because it’s basically the future. It’s everywhere, it also is like the base. Once you know about designing, you could go into architecture, logo designing, web designing, magazines, printmaking, and so much more. So going this direction with graphic design really helped him as a person because being an artist is a hard route.
While me and Ruben were talking about this someone walked into our conversation and shared that his relatives and whole family are artists. A couple of them went to the Art school in San Francisco. Once they finished school, they had a really hard time finding a job or career with what they had. So, they had to go back to school and major in business and start all over again with a completely different subject. I told him how I might want to go in an art field, his advice was to minor in graphic design and major in business. He said like Ruben, it’s the base and is super popular nowadays. Also, my mentor told me the exact same thing. He said graphic design is useful everywhere. Anyone’s business has to have a logo, a website. And there is a lot out there, to food companies, apparel, anything. I am still not certain about what I want to study or the path I want to go, but I’m glad I had these conversations with people because it really opened my eyes about what could be done with this single career. I could even have this as a side job and do something else as well. This skills I have and will learn will always be useful for me in the future.  Some qualities I want to develop in myself is getting use to seeing beneath art or design. I want to further my artistic eye by seeing how something could be made. Seeing the shapes of how it was created, seeing all the separate pieces that when put together make the drawing or design.
This is something my mentor has been pushing me to do. What we mostly do to get familiar with techniques to create a design and make it easier on ourselves is finding the shapes so we could recreate a logo/design. Doing that makes it much easier than trying to recreate the object as a whole. When I was practicing with a design that looked a little complex, at first I saw shapes in the object, but when my mentor came to help me he took out even smaller shapes from what I saw that I never even noticed. It made me realize how much I was missing, and how everything is actually made super simple but when put together it looks very complicated. I had met an employee: Ruben, during lunch when I was drawing. He mentioned he was an artist as well. We had an hour conversation just about art and techniques, different styles, the process, art stores.. Everything and we had so much in common, like we could actually understand each other because we had the same artistic views and personalities. It was super cool because we could just keep going about the same topic. He mentioned the technique of finding shapes in drawings as well, and it was super interesting to hear from him because he’s such a good artist. He draws portraits in pencil that look like pictures and are super realistic. So this made me want to explore and challenge myself to always look at the little things that make up something. Not only in my internship this has come up, but in school with Mrs. Nuvia when we would draw an object, she talked a lot about finding shapes within before drawing the shape of the whole object. This made it super easy and proportional to what it actually looked like. She stressed this technique a lot because it very important and helpful in creating a successful drawing. I never really took the limits of finding shapes beyond drawing, or didn’t even realize that's how things are designed. Learning this from many people makes me feel like it’s a quality that’s very powerful to have and could be super useful in many ways. It makes you stand out, and your artistic vision and creativity completely changes and for the better.  What strikes me most about my workplace is how fast everything goes by. Before I began my internship and had met with my mentor to get to know the company and space he had told me how I’ll be shocked with how fast and how many projects get done within a week. That about 50 designs/projects are done in a week. That’s what impressed me, but I didn’t think when I would be interning it would be as fast for me since I don’t know much about creating logos and using all the softwares. By the first day, I had already created a logo. Which really amazed because I only knew the basics in adobe illustrator and photoshop, with a day my mentor taught me so much. After interning for a week I created 3 designs and had a couple approved. I feel like I know so much more about editing. I feel like I could actually create something that looks super nice and professional with the tools I was taught by myself. My brain is crammed with commands and options. I am pretty sure, by the end of my internship I will be able to complete all the projects and goals I have for this month. I think the thing about my workplace is that you have to practice practice practice, just get the hang of the tools and shortcuts for the softwares. You also need to actually understand how everything is done and work with the other steps besides editing and the designing. You need to understand before sending a design to the production team where screenprinting and actual apparel jobs what actually is being done and how. There is a whole system and process. If it comes to the specific type of colors you use, or separating the layers of a design, you need to know why. And after everything, it becomes second nature, its quick and you understand. Something else that strikes me is how much I’ve learned and applied myself to what I have been learning about. I had a conversation with my mentor about where I want to take graphic design in the future. We talked about how my goal is incorporating my art and creativity to a career. He spoke to me about his past and art and how he got into graphic design. He also helped me with ways I could make money out of what I do and what I could create. He shared a couple websites and programs that would be useful for me and my future. With the editing I had learned we are applying it to something I have been wanting to make, and learning what I know I could make it a lot better then I would have made it a week ago. My coloring book! I’m super stoked because he is going to dow loud editing softwares into my personal computer so I could continue what I know and use it for my benefits. Overall, I didn’t realize how helpful this internship would be to myself. Now I know I have adapted a lot more skills that could be useful in any environment.   Some of my skills are creativity and adaptability. I think I am creative because I am able to create things off of the top of my head, and when problem solving I think out of the box for a solution. I could apply this to my internship site because most obvious, I am at a graphic design company that creates logos. Creating a logo does ask for some creativity, but most importantly as a whole of how big the company is and the roles and how difficult and confusing it could get at times; you have to be able to get over those bumps when working to create something if it has to do with using illustrator, talking to clients about designs, screen printing or even embroidery. I have the skill of adaptability because with any subject, project, or activity I do I challenge myself to always do my best and crave this challenge. When I am able to finish something and be proud of it, it is very relieving. Having this “mindset” makes me put the effort and the skill of adaptability to anything. In my internship site this is very useful since there is so much roles making up the company. Being able to adapt to each one of them is key to creating final products, everything is connected. A skill I want to improve on is networking and building relationships because this is something that is very important in the future, and an actual way to do this is in real world professional settings. I might have an interest in pursuing this as a career, or for a future job, and when having connections with people can bring a lot of success to someone and is very helpful. A way to improve this is in many ways, most importantly learning to make connections with people through communication, and negotiation skills. I also want to improve in responsibility and prioritizing because I could apply this to anything not only for a future career. I think for my internship project I should create a design for at least two clients, and hopefully one of them being HTHCV, cross country and track because it is something I’ve been planning to create. And the other being a real client asking for a logo. I want to be able to do the whole process and experience embroidery, screen printing, using photoshop and illustrator, discussing the designs. I don’t want to come out of this with only one hard skill. And having to do all of these roles will mean improvement in communication since every role has a different team and leader that I will have to meet with to learn how to do the role.
 Right now I’m sort of interested in the study of kinesiology/sports medicine. This might be a possible option because I have experienced helping people who are hurt with stretches and exercises and I really enjoyed it. It interests me knowing about the human body since I’m an athlete. Not only for me but the feeling of helping someone is so satisfying because I’ve been in the position many times where I don’t know what to do. I’m also interested in the art studies, this is an ify one because I’m not sure if this is a good idea for a possible career. I love creating art and applying it to many things, but “artists don’t make much money.” I was looking into graphic designing although I don’t have as much experience it interests me because my “expertise” is drawing, but creativity too. So something along those lines. But these 2 options are just maybes. I also need to finish my coloring book I began to make in the beginning of the year, since it’s time consuming I haven’t gotten around to continue the work. It is a goal to sell them and start an etsy account.
As a career I have no idea what I want to do. My big dream is to be successful, but have a job that I enjoy. I want to have my own time to do stuff and not be stressed but happy to do work. I also want to continue running throughout my life, if that means college, club, trainings for marathons, anything. I want to be able to help my family with any financial needs, taking care of them, repaying them for all they gave me. I need to work on not always focusing as equally on both positive and negative bumps I run into. I stress too much about those things that occur and let them really affect me. It’s something I really can’t handle, I put an excess of pressure on myself and I really don’t think I’ll be able to continue like this. I’m extremely excited for my internship. I have no idea what I’ll be doing, but I’m very happy that it is a graphic design company because that’s what I was looking for since the beginning. I’m super curious about working in a different environment with people I don’t know. |
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