wavesoflife

I had requested next Tuesday off work because I have my appt. with my orthopedic doctor. I checked the schedule last Tues. night and saw that they scheduled me. So I called the next day and talked to Sharon, who said they’d change it. Went in tonight and I was still scheduled to work then. So I had to leave a note for Bobbi. I also wrote about my lack of hours (only getting 15 when I’m supposed to get 20-25). This is the third time (out of four) that they haven’t given me my days off I requested. It’s really starting to annoy me.

Jen at work mentioned to me about the possibility of me taking over her current other job when she goes back to school. She wanted to know if I wanted her to mention something to the company. It’s an office job, doing random things. She says she’s usually bored though because there’s not too much to do usually. She works 4 days a week, from 9 to 4:30 with a half hour lunch and gets paid $8 an hour. She answers the phone (she said it doesn’t ring too much), mails things, copies things, and packs things. It’s a company that gives out information on biomedical research, mainly on animals. Or something like that. They deal with people like Merck and other big drug companies. I really don’t know how it works. Maybe they collect information from studies and pass it on. It doesn’t sound like a bad job at all and told her I’d like her to ask. Hopefully she asks soon. She leaves August 24 for school so it would be a little while before I start, but just knowing I’d have that job would make working at my current job easier, especially if my hip is something that can’t really be fixed. I really hope they’d be interested in hiring me. I haven’t heard from the web design place yet, but it hasn’t quite been a week. I’m really not holding my breath on that though.

Advanced graphic design starts Sunday, but I could log into it yesterday. I was surprised by the assignments. Not a bad surprise though. I had been expecting designing things in Photoshop, sort of similar to my Illustration course. It’s not really. It’s much more practical. They tell you what a fake client wants and you have to do them using both Photoshop and InDesign. There’s not too much creating in Photoshop though.

Here’s our first assignment:
You work for a large firm as a graphic design artist. Your firm has recently landed the Analogyinc.com account. Analogyinc.com is a rising star in the instructional technology consulting industry. The director has asked you to develop ten different 3.5″ by 2″ business card options for this new client to review. Each option should present a different design solution/direction as follows:

Completely Asymmetrical
Symmetrical
Strong use of color
Minimal use of color
Very Loud
Large Type
Small Type
Repetitious
High Contrast
High Tension

The owner of Analogyinc.com has forwarded all necessary documents, including the company logo, business card copy, and color palette that you are to use in your design work. When designing, remember you cannot alter the typeface or color in a company’s logo. In short, although you can resize a corporate logo, it must otherwise remain intact. You should not separate the graphic from the company name. With this in mind, use the graphic design process to create your business card variations for both your supervisor and the client to assess.

Client Documents
Business Card Copy
Logo & Colors

Use InDesign to create your layouts. In InDesign, arrange your 3.5″ x 2″ business card variations in a single 8.5″ by 11″ document (roughly 6 per page). Be certain to label each design with the design direction term. For example, one variation should be labeled asymmetrical, the next symmetrical, and so forth. Use additional pages as necessary; all variations should be placed in one multiple page document. Prior to saving your work convert all text to outlines. Save your work as an InDesign document and submit it to your supervisor for client inspection.

Some thoughts on school:
I came across my final report card from my senior year of high school while unpacking today. I made distinguished honor roll that marking period and my GPA was 92%. I was #56 out of around 200 students. I made A’s every semester of Calculus that year and did very well in all my other classes. I mention Calculus because I had such a hard time with it in college. I took it 2.25 times, and ended up with a B finally. Up through the end of high school, I never had to study much or work very hard to get good grades. I took some honors classes such as history and democratic citizenship. I didn’t take honors physics, calc, chem, bio, or english. Actually, I would have liked to have taken honors english but you had to read two books over the summer and write reports on them to be in honors english. I really never learned how to really study because I could study for a half hour the night before and end up with a high A on a test.
This did not prepare me well for college. My first college attempt at RIT I did okay. Not great, just okay. I think two As, two Bs, and a D (calc). My second attempt, at HACC, I did great. I had a 3.6 GPA when I left (would have higher except for two C’s: visual interdev in which I forgot to take the final, and statistics). HACC was much like high school though. Didn’t have to work hard to get good grades. And when I did work hard, such as for physical geology, I ended up with the highest grades in the class and a 99 average.
Millersville was a shock to me. You actually had to *think* there. It wasn’t just learn the information and spit it back. You had to apply it. I had never had to do this before. At first, I tried studying as much as I did at HACC. Didn’t do too well. Then I tried studying more. Still didn’t do too well. Then I got frustrated and didn’t study much at all. Surprisingly usually did about the same as when I had studied a lot. I usually got the basic stuff right, it was the application parts that messed me up. Studying couldn’t really help that much. I began to feel pretty bad about myself, thinking that I wasn’t as smart as the other students. That’s partly why I wanted to switch schools and majors. When I left Millersville, my GPA was a 2.5. For me, that just wasn’t acceptable. I was getting C’s in my classes and just not enjoying them at all.
Now I’m in the fourth week of my first class at AIU. I have an 87%, which is the class average. There’s the assignments this week plus the ones next week yet to go. I haven’t done as well on the writing parts of the assignments as I could have. I’ve rushed on some of them because I’ve been busy with moving and starting my new job and all. So I’m back again to where I’m not working at my full potential but still doing well, so I feel “smarter” now. But in a different way. Before I felt “science” smart. Now I feel “art” smart. Honestly, I’d rather be science smart, but I think design as a career would be much better for me.