Random Thoughts

Did another mini-project for Bruce. Another round of Grand Cayman stuff. Photoshopping parrots onto the wayfinding monitors that Bo designed. Another good 6 hours of stuff sent out. :)
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Pulling together ideas for Falmouth - water activities and environment enhancement stuff. Still slow in the office. :P
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So the two meccas of themed design are LA and Orlando. I want to move out to LA eventually + tackle that job market. Maybe I'll retire in Orlando (LOL). :) Erica mentioned one company out there that she worked for, Thinkwell Group. From what she says its huge + they use a lot of freelancers. I wonder if that's what I'll have to do... freelance. I dread the idea. :( Disney is always out in LA - Burbank. Gotta find the other companies. Bruce apparently went to UCLA for Architecture. Maybe I should see where their design alum go to work.
I wonder where Universal Creative is...?
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Erica suggested that I also peruse the TEA directory super thoroughly. She said a lot of themed environment design companies don't show at IAPPA.
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Speaking of IAPPA, I'm not going this year. Yeah... it falls in my no-flying period. :( However, I found an alternative plan! I'm going to go to the TEA SATE conference in Orlando in September instead. This way I can meet all the important TEA people - designers and creatives. + Also, I can decide which conference would be better to job hunt at come next year.
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I should figure out what I can use for my portfolio in this internship and update my resume.

End of July

Wow. I can't believe I haven't posted in about a month!
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We've gone from super busy all this past month to super slow just for this week. Bruce is out of town on vacay and Erica was out yesterday and today. Ripley's Hollywood was due Friday before last, which had us all working in a frenzy to get all the notes and touch-ups done. The company paid for dinner when we stayed late the Thursday before it was due. So nice. The week after, we submitted some revised concepts for Margaritaville Grand Cayman. I put together three boards with additional revenue ideas. Sadly, I don't think it was quite where Bruce wanted it to be when it went out on Wednesday. :( I ran out of time for color on all of the sketches, but I thought that the sketch work came a long way from where it started. It definitely had a good line quality to it that matched the line quality of other BDR work. Still, that was the first time I thought I didn't do such a good job on something here. It would have benefited from another pass at the drawing, color, and maybe more organization. We learn and keep doing better! I did a brief photoshop color job for Bruce last Thursday. That was good. He seemed pretty happy about that.
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After Grand Cayman, we got a contract for Margaritaville in Falmouth, Jamaica. So it'll be more Margaritaville from now until the end of the internship. Bruce is hoping to do all the Caribbean Margaritavilles - they're owned by the same people. Right now we're just starting on Falmouth gathering info and ideas. Meeting tomorrow.
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Can't believe I only have two and a half weeks left!

I've lost track of the weeks!: Friday

Did I mention before that I love this job?
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Bruce took me aside after staff meeting on Monday and told me that I was doing good work but he felt like he didn't quite know my "secret weapon" yet. I suppose it's because everyone in the firm has some sort of specialty. There are illustrators and CADers and interior designers (who pick surface finishes), and then there's me. I was thinking about it through the week, and I think my secret weapon is that I just get stuff done! I dabble in a little bit of everything (except finishes). It's cool looking at the Margaritaville set going out on Tuesday and seeing the image board, signage, and photoshop renderings that I've done to help it come together. It makes me happy. I also realized that I LOVE photoshop. I'm pretty good with it + can make stuff look good/change stuff relatively fast. If I were to market a skill for myself, that would be it. :)
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Today I received some encouraging words. Bruce said he thought I was doing more than what's expected from a coop/intern, and that he can see me significantly contributing to work that goes out. SO GREAT. I told him that it's so exciting to be given the opportunity and that I love it and this is what I want to be doing for a career! So I'm basically in the best internship ever. :D
Another affirmation came from Stef. She mentioned that she can't even pull me to do the tedious busy work that has to be done because I'm more of a junior designer and I'm actually doing stuff. lol. It made me happy. :)
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There's still much work to be done for Margaritaville before Tuesday... It'll be fun though, and Bruce says they might become a repeat client because the people he's working with own all the Margaritavilles in the Caribbean (which is like five or six?). I guess there will be a lot more parrots, and flip flops for BDR in the future. B) Fun stuff.

Week 5: Tuesday

To be honest, I think I like doing grunt work almost as much as I like designing. Erica was working on a color rendering for Inn on the River yesterday and I helped her edit linework in photoshop and put in the client logo and such. I thought it was so rewarding just to be able to contribute to something going out under deadline. + I'm pretty good at photoshop editing. :) So I really felt like I helped out.
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Signage for boardwalk central in Wildwood is finally winding to a close. Sent out illustrator files today. It was fun designing that + I can't wait to have it be installed so I can say I actually designed something semi-permanent. :)
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In other news I'm finally learning ArchiCAD. It's interesting, and like with every CAD or other software, there's a bit of a learning curve. I'm doing cases for Ripley's Hollywood. It's going slow right now, but I think it'll pick up once I get used to all the commands. CAD is so much easier than hand drafting!

Week Three: Friday

So much design! I LOVE it! Just sent out concept ideas for a boardwalk sign to be installed in Wildwood, NJ - something near Morey Piers. I'm super excited that my ideas will be somewhere in the world. :) Still working on Ripley's stuff. Haven't done any ArchiCad yet, but I'm being kept busy thinking about other bits and details of galleries. I wish I were faster on gallery work. I feel like I have to just keep designing to get fast at it. I love this job! :D

Week Two:Tuesday

Work has been a bit of a blur. Last week I helped Erica photoshop a bunch of text and photos onto a Guinness World Records building rendering. It was kind of schlep work but I felt like I really contributed to something going out the door. The deadline for it was that day and everyone else was working on other things. I was pretty happy about that. Now I'm working on a children's crawl-space in the Hollywood Ripley's. The Ripley package is due at the end of June, and I'm trying to figure this out before Stephanie gets back from Finland and puts me to work on ArchiCad next week. Work is so unspecific compared to school assignments. I feel like I must be much more self-motivated to succeed. 

Cool Building

I met the owner of the company yesterday, Mr.Bruce D Robinson, and his adorable retriever Lily. :) He took me on a tour of the building. He had it renovated from an old motor company. It's really cool seeing all the quirks of the building preserved like the old freight elevators. It's pretty impressive how the studio space is branded out to be an amazing creative environment. It just goes to show how everything reflects on one's design integrity. (It makes me want to work harder to spread design to other parts of my life, like my room at home! What a mess.)
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Bruce told me that the only thing that would hold me back from growing in the company would be myself. I believe that. There's such a long way to go!