The first week of my internship with the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough was a full and exciting one. I arrived on my first day, a Sunday, to learn more about the Alliance and what I would be doing for the summer. Immediately, I was thrust into a learning experience as visitors to Hillsborough started flooding through the front door of the Alexander Dickson house (The historic building that houses the Visitors Center). For the remainder of my time at the Visitors Center that day I was learning on the job as people asked questions about Historic Hillsborough or the area in general. In between visits, I learned that my main focus for the summer would be to assist with the welcoming of visitors to Hillsborough, the organization/promotion of the July 4th Picnic, creating itineraries and self guided tours for those who might visit Hillsborough, and any other projects that will present themselves. I was also given a working history of the Alliance and how the visitors center fits in with its responsibilities. Having lived in Hillsborough for the past 9 years and being involved with events in Historic Hillsborough during that time, I am lucky enough to already have a good knowledge base of what Hillsborough has to offer. I am confident that I can put that information onto paper or into words for those that are seeking it. For the remainder of the week, I focused on writing the itineraries so that they can be posted on the website and available as soon as possible to those that need them. I made good progress and I am happy with the way they are turning out. This coming week I will continue working on them when I can, but I will be traveling with my family in the midwest and I will return to Hillsborough on June 18th.

Week Fifteen 04/25 through 05/05

After going to East Coast Aircraft on Thursday to discuss posters for Marta’s office and the facility we decided that these posters and the book pages will be different. This then led us into the conversation about what she wanted the posters for the office to look like, which she decided to go with 2 posters to display one paint and one interior picture to showcase next to an interior material swatch or exterior paint swatch. Another 3 posters will consist of collages of planes, one of small planes and one of large as well as a poster with interior photos that they painted/refurbished. After saying this these were brand new poster designs than what I have been working on in the previous weeks, which is a little disappointing. Fortunately for some of the poster designs that I created could be incorporated into the book that she had me create this week. I used a company called Artisan State, which is a company online at www.artisanstate.com. I was hoping to have the book created last week, week fourteen, but due to a couple set backs from the different poster designs I had to complete it this week. Unfortunately though due to a lack of professional pictures Marta decided later in the week that we would give up on the book until a later date after spending some time on creating the pages.  Also due to these set backs I had to tell them that I couldn’t make the way to showcase different interior and exterior samples easily, but instead we are trying to do that with the different posters. This was actually my last week with East Coast Aircraft and I have to say that I have achieved a lot and very happy to have completed this wonderful opportunity. I am finishing up some of the posters for them and will be able to present them to Marta on Monday in order to be sent to printing.

This last week at North Avenue Studios has been very hands on! Since David had been out of town for a while there was a large chunk of studio time open to work on some mixes with him for the Off The Avenue Series.  This weekend (health pending) we’ll be working on an Off The Avenue with one of David’s favorite bands Tycho and I’m hoping to get in a few new mixes before the end of the semester to add to my portfolio! Speaking of Off The Avenue some of our newer stuff is up so I’ll finally be able to post some of the bands I’ve worked with! It’s crazy that the semester is coming to a close  and also the amount I’ve learned at North Ave! The following three I set up, recorded, and assisted mixing:

Week fourteen 04/18 through 04/24

This week started with me finishing up the posters that I have been creating, but then I was asked to make them smaller changing the dimensions from 2ft by 3ft to 18in by 24in. Once I was asked to do this I sat down with Marta to go through the photos of the planes, so that she could just pick the planes that she wanted made into posters. Now that she has picked these it made making the posters a lot quicker and now that they are finished I can show them to Marta, hopefully get them approved and start creating the book that she wants so showcase her work. The website has been apparent again in this week for little changes through out.  Which consisted of moving some pictures that were again in the wrong place, repositioning a paragraph on the interior page. I also put more transportation and lodging information on the contact page, in order to make it easier for customers to find a way to their facility or a close place to stay. The last thing that I updated on the website was a promo tab for future promotions, which Sonya a new employee will be creating a design for my to put on this tab, I believe, every month. With next week being the last week I have a couple things that I hope to finish. One being the book of examples and two, a way to showcase different interior and exterior samples that Marta would like made to make it easier to showcase different combinations.

Note: The posters are too large to upload onto this forum.

Week thirteen 04/11 through 04/17

This week at East Coast Aircraft was no different from the rest, but a little more rewarding because I was able to complete a lot tasks for them that were all basically approved. I started off the week creating more posters for them, which I was able to complete about half of the Piston Twin Planes. Another task that I accomplished this week was the sixth Eblast Advertisement for an aircraft magazine like I’ve done before for 5 other advertisements. This week also consisted of going back to the website and reconfiguring some pages. First I was tasked to Remove the Primary interior and exterior pages and consolidate them as a list in the corner of the existing interior and exterior sub pages. I also was asked to take the cockpit page and cabin page and consolidate them as well to make one interior page with no sub-tabs. For the exterior page I was asked to do the same, where the strip and paint page is now the primary exterior page instead of a sub-tab. Also we noticed that some of the titles on the home page and through out the website there were links that actually weren’t links, so I went and removed the ability to click on these titles. The last task for the website was to change some things on the contact page. First Marta wanted the google map to show the satellite view first instead of the map view. Second she wanted the ability to have an area where people could easily find Hotels around the area near their location, so I put some links to a couple local hotels under the map with the hotels phone number and address. That was it for this week and just two more weeks left.

This past week David has been at the PAX east video game convention with the game “Grabbles” we’ve been working on, so I wasn’t able to go into North Ave this week at all. That being said I’ve been working in the Stetson Studio on two tracks for our Production 2 class after getting feedback from David on them. Having limited experience with recording and producing percussion, he had a lot of advice on how mine should sit in the mix, panning techniques, and how to keep layered percussion tracks from getting messy. The in progress version of this track can be listened to at the link below!

Week twelve 04/05 through 04/10

This week at East Coast Aircraft was pretty eventful because I was able to finalize some designs for Marta that were up to her standards. First off I redesigned some of the eblast designs because she wanted some of the layouts and colors changed and now that I have done that she is happy with most of them. I also went back and fixed some of the Sun and Fun posters for her so that she could use those for the event. I have also completed some more posters for her that includes most of the single piston planes. I still have to find a new background and a way to get the pictures to stand out a little more. Another thing that I was able to do is update all of the jet posters so that they are all the correct size, which unfortunately a lot of the pictures that are used aren’t large enough, so I have discussed that with her and she says that she might just not use those planes. The last thing that I accomplished this week was the 5th advertisement for Eblast, which I still need to show to Marta for approval. Hopefully everything will be approved this week and I can focus more on different designs and the Book that she wants created.

This week over at North Avenue Studios was a relatively calm week session wise, David was too busy getting ready for the PAX conference. As it turns out this was an awesome chance to really sit down and go through a mix with him as we worked on the opening track for the Grabbles demo. Starting from the stems up we went through the many many settings of his board and how all the busses and mixes flow into and out of the board (Which seriously helped my understanding of how everything runs through the patch bay). Working through the theme track also gave me a low pressure environment (aka with a client watching me fumble) to explore the different sounds that each rack had, and ask a lot of questions about the settings he’s chosen with a very intensive focus on compressors. After that we listened to my two tracks from ARP2. David gave me a lot of great feedback, and gave me a lot of great feedback on how to make my mixes cleaner. My homework for the week is to implement those changes and bring them back for further review, ready to see where we can take my tracks!

Week Eleven 03/27 through 04/04

This week at East Coast Aircraft went well and was successful in many ways. First off after this weeks update I was able to finally see one of my designs in an advertising magazine for local businesses. Also Marta told me that the Business Cards have been printed and they look excellent. For the design work that I completed this week I took the signs for the Fun and Sun event and enlarged them. After doing this there was a big Set back because it pixilated the logo so I had to spend quite amount of time recreating the logo so that it would not be pixilated once blown up to the 20x16in dimensions. Another thing that I achieved was fixing the Eblast advertisements 2 and 3. Also I was able to create a new advertisement for this week. After the update on Thursday Marta had asked me to redo the advertisements that have the black logo with gold trim and make it a plain yellow logo because she feels like it will stand out more. So after a long week of making advertisements I will be going back to improve them once more. Hopefully this week I will be able to give her a final copy of these advertisements that are up to her standards.