This was my first week of WM rehearsals. We started on Monday with an orientation of the company for the actors and then moved onto a read through of the script. We have an advisor from the local synagogue who came to the read through and has since been to a few rehearsals to help us to make sure we accurately and sensitively depict the jewish material in the script. The second half of the day we started blocking the show very roughly with the actors moving where and when they felt they should move with director staying mostly hands off the first time and then adjusting things as we moved further along. Within the next three days we had blocked the whole show and moved on to working on the nuances of movement and line delivery. There are only three actors in the show and in the first scene of the show one of them gets his leg amputated and then spends the rest of the show stationary on the chaise, this means that most of the blocking is only for 2 of the actors in the show. The most challenging piece of blocking is the amputation scene (pictured below) because we have to carefully choreograph the struggle to ensure the actor’s safety and because when Simon and Caleb are covered by the blanket, Simon has to continue the sawing motion while taking off the clean apron, putting on a bloody apron, take the tourniquet off of Caleb’s leg, put caleb’s leg into the hole in the chaise, cover up the “amputated” leg, and put the saw, biting stick, and clean apron into the tool box. This show  will be preformed in a building in Miller Park called the Aviary and will be staged in the round. The drawing below is the ground plan for the show which shows the three platforms in the aviary surrounded by the seating that we will be bringing in.

This week marks the end of the Summer Learning Institute at MOAS and the second to last week of our internship with the education department. As far as weeks goes, this one was pretty easy and straightforward.  The entire department staff was on hand and so on Monday we were not needed for the morning registration of classes. There also happen to be a private event going on in the Root Gallery from opening until 2:30pm. This event led to a lack of tour groups since the Root Gallery is an essential part of most tours.

With an open morning I stared working on some fossil cast that needed sanding and plastering. Thanya and I, then handled the afternoon registration which was smaller then the usual morning groups. Afterward, we continued with our work on the Prehistory of Florida coloring book. To enhance the coloring book we decided to include activities like wordsearches, mazes and crossword puzzle that directly reflect the information that is found in that exhibit. I worked in generating these puzzles while Thanya finish the main two page spread of the coloring book.

I continued working on the fossil cast throughout the week as well as drawing other material for the coloring book. On Wednesday we had our only tour for the week with a nice small groups. There was no help needed in the actually class so overall the week was mostly dedicated toward the coloring book.

As the internship is coming to a closing there is a certain level of excitement with the camps ending. Even so, MOAS will feel very empty and quiet with the abundance of kids in the Children’s Musuem.

This week was the last week of summer camp at the museum, and things couldn’t have run more smoothly. It ended without a hitch, and now all that’s left to do is simply organize and clean up the museum.

We only had one group to tour this week, and generally they were well behaved. The only difficulty was touring the Prehistory gallery because there were other children visitors, who weren’t part of the group, and they were also obnoxiously loud. Normally other guests aren’t a problem, but because the kids were loud in the gallery that echoes, it was harder to present my information. Nevertheless, I had to be as loud as I could and give it my best.

Apart from that, we are still working on the prehistory coloring book, and we have all of our sketches done, now I just need to create line art over everything, and finally we will organize everything into InDesign.

Here are several samples of the illustrations:

Right now I’m finishing the line art of my last drawing of the ground sloth. Once we have the drawings complete, I’ll also add in the crossword puzzle and maze that Ariana created and include the correlating text. It will take less time for me to create the line art for her drawings since I don’t need to do any sketching on my part and I can simply jump right into digitalizing her drawings.

We plan on completing this project early next week because our supervisor also wants us to create fake money for the pizza place at the Children’s Museum. I will go over that project more next week.

Although there was a lot of work at the museum this past week, I was mostly working from home due to the general strikes in Venezuela. I worked on editing some of the photos I took of the current exhibits so that they could be published on the museum’s website. My supervisor posted them immediately,
so check them out below!. On the other hand, the summer camps got reschedule, so I updated the information on the Instagram stories. Additionally, I focused on finishing the newsletter, and I am happy to say I am finally done. However, it was quite challenging to do so. After I was finished testing the images, the layout, and the links, I noticed the image in the header was a little pixelated, so I did some research since I originally thought JPEG was the best format for web, but I ended up reading somewhere that when it comes to images that include text—such as that image for the header—it is actually better to have the images as PNGs. Therefore, I exported the image in that format, and indeed, the image looked sharper. When I showed it to my supervisor, she asked if I could add a couple more link so that users could click on the names of each exhibition room and a new window or tab would open with the web page of the exhibit that was currently displaying in that room. Thus, I completed this modification before finally turning in the newsletter. I also worked on a couple ID badges for people who just started to work at the museum. I did this on InDesign and it was fairly easy since there was a template for it, so my work consisted of mostly editing and resizing the images.
On my last day at the museum, I sat with my supervisor to discuss my performance. I got a lot of positive feedback from my supervisor and I asked for suggestions to improve, so she told me I could get better at anticipating what needs to be done in the workplace, and I definitely agree since that could increase productivity. However, she confessed that was a skill that was developed through experience and over time.
This internship challenged me in multiple ways. I had to adapt to the not-so-conventional working conditions while expanding my knowledge of HTML and getting reacquainted with Photoshop and InDesign. Nonetheless, I truly enjoyed working on the projects that were assigned to me and everyone at the museum made me feel like part of the team, so I am really happy I got to intern there and I look forward to similar experiences in the future.

Photography and editing for the museum´s homepage

We started off the week as we always do with camp registration. Normally, Thanya and I, handle the 4 to 6 year old but, there was a registration incident with a new camper in the 7 to 9 group thus I has to covered for Nicole while she sorted out the problem. As it so happen the class for 7 to 9 year olds was the Harry Potter one so there was an abundance of new campers and parents that required paperwork and explanations of how attendance and the picking up process worked out. While the registration was hectic at moments when multiple families required assistance I managed to swiftly handle their paperwork and questions. Once we concluded registration we update our paper records for all the camp groups.

That morning we not only did a tour but, we also helped a number of times in the Harry Potter camp that was being lead by Kelsey. We arrange the entrances to Platform 9 & 3/4 by taping the “brick wall” we completed last week to the door that lead to the train cars in the Root Gallery. There the campers enter the usually off-limit train cars. After this we had a house sorting that went as well as it could have gone considering that the kids had pre-established preferences. It was nice to see the Sorting Hat that we created being used and the kids be so excited about it.

We continued with our help to the Harry Potter themed camp throughout the week by making stencils that would be used by the campers in a painting project. We later assisted in a game of Quidditch where we were goal post, score keeper and tired to keep the game friendly.

Outside of helping in the camp we concluded the planets for the mobile planetarium (which is to scale). We also took photos of each MOAS rock we made to create an index for museum as the project will soon be rolling out to the general public. We also began to really working on the coloring that we have been discussing for some time with the head of the department. He provided us with a previous and rather outdated example of one that the Musuem used. Thanya and I will be using that material as a foundation where we plan to bring in more aspects of the Prehistory of Florida exhibit as well as activities.

This week was rather slow as far as tours go because we only toured one group for the entire week, and they gave us no trouble. We had expected more groups, but the rest of them just never showed up. We opted to helping out with the 7-9 yr old camp. It was the Hogwarts camp, and last week we had created the sorting hat, and at the start of the week we tried to simulate the 9 & 3/4 station, by placing our paper brick wall on the entrance to the trains display in the Root Gallery.

Soon afterwards, we guided the kids inside the train, which was a special privilege for them since normally visitors aren’t allowed inside the trains. We had to supervise them just to make sure they didn’t damage anything, but overall it was a fun treat for everyone.

Note: All parents/guardians have consented for their children to be photographed.

Additionally, we also created stencils of a Hogwarts silhouette. The kids used these stencils for a negative space painting, and of course the kids got to keep their paintings. The end result would have looked something like this:

On the last day of camp, we had to help the “Quidditch” game by holding up hula hoops as the goal posts. Then after quidditch, the kids got to watch one of the Harry Potter movies, and we served them butter beer.

While the camp was going on, we also finally finished the planet’s that we have been working on. We sanded and painted the monstrous ball that is Jupiter, as well as these tiny balls that represent smaller planets, such as Earth and Venus.

Much like our David Tutera partnership, we also have a large partnership with with Martha Stewart. Currently we have been developing new products and branding with Martha Stewart’ s team for her new paper crafting line coming out in 2018. For this, we are doing a large scale venue photo shoot much like the one with David Tutera. Our photo shoot will feature both her new party and paper lines. We’ve also been building this entire set. Our process with the Martha team is a bit different however due to her large scale of designer recognition. Every step that we take constantly needs approval and recognition from her team. One of our products that needs to be featured is a cupcake paper shell. Meaning we need to find either real cupcakes or make fake ones for our photo shoot. We spent about 2 weeks building our own artificial cupcakes as well as ordering a dozen of differently decorated cupcakes from a total of nine bakeries in the Cleveland area until we finally found a cupcake that was approved by our partnering Martha Team. We also are building 3 new kinds of walls for this photo shoot. These also needed to be approved by the Martha Team before being allowed to move forward with our projects. We had originally scheduled this photo shoot for July 17, but due to the delay in communications on Marthas side and  our chaotic schedule due to our David Tutera photo shoot going on at the same time.

Our Team not only covers normal crafting trends but we also cover wedding, party, home decor and many more crafting trends. A large part of our jobs while developing products is also developing new brands and packaging. This being said we work with our in house product commercial photographers on a regular bases to acquire product shots as well as hold photo shoots. We work with our in house designers in addition to large r outside designers for all of our product production and photo shoots. Currently our company has a partnership with the large wedding designer David Tutera. This past spring, my colleague Rachel who has all creative direction on photo shoots held a large scale wedding photo shoot and David Tutera came to Cleveland to be in it with the rest of our models. This coming week we will be doing another large scale photo shoot focusing on three new wedding trends in David’s line for 2018. Instead of going to a venue for our photo shoot this time, we built one in our storage building called Q2. We layed flooring, built walls (that are also being used for a Martha Stewart photo shoot), installation pieces, built faux windows, and ordered furniture, and other venue specific items. Ive been asked to model for our Old Hollywood themed wedding trend for our packaging photos and will get to have that experience while working with my team as well! As a smaller business we commonly use our own staff as models and for packaging materials.

While at darice, the range of work i have done has been very wide but a main responsibility of my department are trend reports. Over the course of my time here this summer, I have contributed to a total of  over 27 Trend Reports; Day of the dead, Day of the dead kids, Friendsgiving, Hocus pocus, Happy harvest, Hypnotic horror, Kids harvest, Simply cozy, Urban luxe, Snail Mail, Felt, Bubble July_Trend_Felt July_Trend_Soaps JULY_Trend_SNAILMAIL Bars, Holiday Cabin Christmas, Holiday Metallic Christmas, Holiday Brights Christmas, Summer Barefoot Backyard, Summer Letters from Camp, Summer Poolside Cool, 3 new Spring trends, 3 new Harvest/Halloween themes, and the 3 mentioned previously in my 1st post (some attached to post).  Each Trend report has a multitude of steps to it. first is coming up with a trend or theme that is rising into popularity for the next years quarters – all the trends Ive done are for 2018. Second we find blogs, Pinterest reference, Instagrammers, and more that the leaders of this trend to research and have visual designs of the styles or trends we are looking at advertising. After this we create a reference board (usually on pinterest) similar to a mood board that is taught in Graphic Design by Madison Creech. Once his is done – we create pdfs in adobe illustrator for our buyers to then understand our trend and begin working with our Product Development and Sales Team to accomplish everything that needs to be done to get these into our stores. We also create “make and take” sheets for our common crafters. We take specific crafts within our trend reports and find the product that we sell that are necessary for this craft. We put it all together so it is easy for our customers to see what to buy together for their target audience to easily create these crafts. We also create inspiration boards for our project craft managers for them to make tangible examples of the things our materials can make that go along with each trend. I have been luck enough to be a part of every step in this process at some point in my working here this summer. Because of this, I was allowed to go to a large meeting with the Vice President of Trend from Michaels Craft Stores (since we are undergoing transitions into their corporation) where she introduced our direction and lead for the next two years in crafting retail. After this I was offered a position throughout the school year of being a “Trend Lookout” for the Michaels headquarters located in Irving, Texas. This means I will constantly be doing research for them remotely and sending them new ideas and trend reference for fresh ideas.

About a week ago I got the opportunity to takeover the Stetson University official Snapchat. I felt so honored to be able to do it! As mentioned in my previous post, I had been working with Gerri Bauer in The Office of University Marketing. I mentioned to her that it might be cool to do a Takeover with one of the summer camps that are going on within Stetson, not one of the external camps that uses Stetson’s campus. Currently the School of Music had their Summer Flute Workshop going on, so I emailed Carrie Methany asking if it would be of interest to them for me to do a Snapchat Takeover. She ran it by the camp director, sent me a schedule, and we set up the Takeover for that Friday!

Friday comes and I show up to Presser and I have NO IDEA WHERE I AM GOING! I just started wandering and eventually found the campers, but all the while I had to think, “How am I going to create a Snapchat story that promotes Stetson, the School of Music, and Summer Camp?”

It may not really seem that a background in Digital Arts really helps with creating good Snaps, but I was able to take some of the things I learned from Digital Video and apply them to this project.

Thinking about things like how to get good lighting, decent audio, proper framing… All of these made the Snapchat story look professional and put together.

Gerri said I could continue to do Snapchat Takeovers if I want to, I just have to talk to her first. I would love to brainstorm some ideas of how to maybe integrate more design aspects into Snapchat stories. So far I have that something could be designed beforehand and using Snapchat’s Scissors Creative Tool to save the design and put it into the snap.. If you have any other ideas please let me know!

But that’s all for this post!

See you next time friends 🙂

-Taylor Hamilton