With my time consuming and insane schedule, the weeks have continued to blur together and go by quickly. The semester will soon come to a close and with the upcoming portfolio assignment things have been hectic. It’s really forced me to take a step back and recognize how I spend my time and what I should be prioritizing between studying for finals, work, projects, and reading assignments.

As far as my internship at the marketing office is concerned, I feel like I have made improvements in my work and my ability to judge what is needed for different projects. At the moment my task at hand is to design an infographic for a new program that Stetson is working out the fine details of. Essentially it’s a way to give incentive for graduating high schoolers to apply and start their college career at Stetson, and it has definitely brought some challenges.

I’ve been pushed to use outside sources for different pieces of the project, which has been tough for me as I usually try to create everything from scratch. I can say though that it does take some time out of the process and tends to keep everything in the same art style. Before starting this internship I assumed that most creators design graphics from the bottom, up but on the contrary they use resources from Adobe Stock and various stock image websites and take inspiration from all realms of the internet and publishers.

Looking back at my progress throughout the semester (both in the internship and in my digital art class), I’m pleased with what I’ve learned and feel as if I have a better sense of reality in what to expect in my career field. 

My draft took slightly longer than I expected it to since I have yet to figure out how to diffuse the gradient for the backgrounds shadow in illustrator. This has so far created an issue with too harsh of a contrast of the colors I decided to go with, which were shades of orange, red, and yellow. I attempted to use the gradient tool alone, but I couldn’t get the angle just right no matter how much I played around with it.

I went over this issue with Joel in our meeting and he agreed that it didn’t suit the overall look. I got a lot of other feedback from him about the first draft during the meeting and I’ll admit I feel slightly discouraged, but now I have a lot to reflect on and learn from for other projects.

The main issues being the color palette which was compared to Halloween rather than a winter event. It also didn’t fit to the “Stetson brand”, which I wasn’t aware existed until noted by Sonja and they showed me the list of typical things that the school tries to stick to. Now that I know what the schools brand is I have a more specific idea of what I can work with and I’m starting fresh with a new concept and design thats minimalistic.

In reevaluating my font choices I have found a thinner sans-script font, in addition to a new graphic to replace my old hand-drawn illustration. Let’s hope my next design works out better than I imagined in my head.

Today was the day that I finally got to go over my Yule Log sketches with my advisor Joel Jones, and we decided to lean towards the first version I created. The first sketch included what I envision to be a newer look for the event in comparison to past flyers. The main focus being an illustrated graphic of a fire that would cast a light on to a 3D extruded text with the bold font.

As I try to describe it in written word it seems complicated, but my goal is for it to be simple and seemingly rustic. Now that I have an approved sketch I have to start thinking about color and font types to use and I’m thinking of using a warm palette to play off of the light from the fire for vibrancy.

I also have to consider if I will be creating my own vector image in Illustrator or if I will find one through Adobe Stock like Joel showed me for the sake of saving time. So far it’s been difficult to find images of fire or a yule log that will go with the look that I’m trying to create, so for now I’m starting to make basic sketches in Illustrator.

My hope is to finish the first draft for Joel by Friday for our next meeting on Monday so I can get his opinion and maybe some help with what text should be included on the flyer. As of now I’m feeling optimistic in getting the project done fast and hope to find some fitting fonts.

Today I had my first meeting with my internship supervisor and another advisor at marketing office to talk about my first major assignment that I’ll get to have creative liberty over. For the most part I’m greatly excited, yet nervous about venturing into this realm of graphic design that I’m not completely used to. Since most of my background is in photography and less about graphic design I’m hoping to push myself outside my comfort zone and learn more by being actively involved.

For my first task of the assignment, I am creating several drafts and sketches of possible layouts for the upcoming Yule Log Lighting that Stetson hosts every year in the winter. Joel and Sonja have encouraged me to research the previous years Yule Log Lightings and how it was promoted in the schools publications, and I haven’t found as much information as I’d like in the schools archives. In most of the student publication articles that I found the same activities are held in December with little variation, including candle lighting, Christmas carols, and  the Yule log lighting.

Of the most odd traditions of the Yule log lighting, they usually serve hot chocolate and cookies at the event, which I think isn’t the best choice considering we live in Florida and don’t get much cold weather. Despite this impractical drink choice, I’m looking forward to learning more about it and coming up with some ideas for the project that will give me a clue what to include on the flyer without it being so long that the reader loses attention.

On that note, I leave this entry with a few budding ideas and the hope that I can explain it well enough with a few scribbles on notebook paper.

Getting this internship has been a crazy rollercoaster and a lot of hoops to jump through, but now that everything has settled into place and I’ve secured my spot as an intern at the Stetson marketing office I’m excited to get started and learn more about my future career options if I decide to minor in marketing.

Since I wasn’t originally planning to take on an internship in my first semester here at Stetson, I’ll have to admit that I’m considerably underprepared and don’t have a great idea of what I’m getting myself into. Despite this and my impending fear of being unable to meet these standards with my lack of experience, I’ve been able to convince myself that it’s okay that I haven’t done a lot in the field of marketing. After all, the entire reasoning for an internship is to gain experience and learn the ropes of the field with hands-on projects under the guide of someone with more experience.

My first hands-on task given to me by my supervisor, was to go around campus taking student life pictures with the camera he entrusted me with for the day. He said the goal of it was to asses my skill level and how I can improve over-all during my internship. I agree that this will benefit me, but it was insanely difficult to take student life pictures when there was nothing going on around campus at the time and the most exciting thing I found to shoot was a group of kids reading. I think I found it difficult since my main area of photography is events and candid photos that show energy, excitement, and emotion.

Even so, I think it did push me to try to make something out of nothing and that I learned more about my own personal photography style. I haven’t given him the photos yet, but I’m hoping my low energy shots are enough for the assignment.