Conclusion

My graphic design internship has officially come to an end! On December 21, 2009, I reported to the Empire State College print shop for what would be the last day. I spent the day editing the 2010 college phone directory. The highlight of the afternoon was coming across a guy in the listing with the last name of "Batman". If Mr. Batman sees this, I'm sorry. I know you have probably been bugged about it your whole life. However, I hope you at least have a t-shirt or a maybe even a tattoo acknowledging the fact that you are indeed Batman.

It was certainly an interesting fall semester. Not only was this internship considered a "practicum", but it was also intended to be a learning experience that counts as course credit. I would definitely say that it fulfilled these requirements and that I got a lot out of it. I learned a great deal about graphic design and the entire editing and printing processes. It was also my first time working in an office environment, so I learned all kinds of things about office flow and teamwork.

In addition, I established a couple of professional connections that may or may not lead to a job sometime in the future. I am not getting my hopes up due to how the economy is and such, but at least my name is out there a little bit more now. Nevertheless, the experiences I had were invaluable and have given me a new outlook on life after college.

I would definitely be excited about working in some kind of design or illustration office, especially with a team of like-minded individuals. I think it would be a huge outlet for creativity and a great source of inspiration, as well as a fun time. Now I just need to find one that would hire me.

Printing Machines and Other Stuff

Other than making final edits to publications so that they are print-ready, I have also helped make some things that were new and interesting to me. For one, Janet and I worked on a college merchandise brochure. I was not aware that the college was selling t-shirts and hoodies. They looked pretty spiffy.

Also, we worked on some business cards for mentors and such. After finalizing the design and layout of these, I went down to the printing area and watched the entire process. First, multiple cards were printed on the same pages. They were then taken over to the cutting machine and were made into individual cards. Finally, they were sent over to the college's internal mail room.

Not only have I viewed each stage of the design and printing processes of official college publications, but I have also experienced it with one of my personal designs. I made some posters, postcards, signs, catalogs and such for an upcoming art show (see the design here). The college was gracious enough to pay for the printing of these and, as a result, I was able to see the process from start to finish.

Here are some pictures of the printing machines. Something I found to be amazing was how much these things cost; it is not uncommon for one to go for about $200,000.

Last Days at 2 Union and First at Print Shop

Back at the beginning of this month, I finished up my time at the 2 Union Avenue office, where I worked under Gael Fischer and made advertisements for the college. I have since moved over to the college's print shop, where I help with the final stages of the publication process.

In my previous post, I included some ads that I designed that were all a part of the same campaign. Here are some of the last ones I made while in the office. They were a bit more random.My first day at the print shop was on November 9th. I have been going there every Monday and Friday ever since, and this time I am working under Janet Jones. She is a typesetter/editor and every design is sent to her before it gets printed. I have learned that many designs are changed slightly once they are sent to her, in order for them to be print-ready.

One thing that is quite important is finding out if the publication needs "bleeds" applied to it. A bleed is usually 9 picas (or 1/8th of an inch) and it is the printing--often times an image--that goes beyond the edge of where the paper will be cut. This is necessary because the paper cutters are not 100% precise. It prevents unwanted white space that would be around an image, for example, if the paper were to be cut without a bleed.

I was told about the different forms of book binding. Some examples are "perfect" and "stapled" binding. For stapled binding, pages are set up strangely during the design process; page 1 will be next to or on top of page 24, for instance. This is the way they are printed and will read in the proper order once they are bound.

I was also given a tour of the entire print shop. There are dozens of huge machines that can do just about anything when it comes to printing. It was also pretty neat to be able to see some of the older machines that have since been replaced with newer technology. In my next post, I will include some pictures of these machines.

College Advertisements

Here are some examples of what I work on. I put these together for this particular undergraduate campaign and sent each one off to a different publisher. As you can see, they are all derived from the same general template, which is essential for making the campaign look uniform.
Strict branding rules must be followed during the creation of these ads. For example, you may notice that the fonts are similar throughout. This font is called "Humanist" and a couple variations of it are used, such as "Condensed" and "Bold Condensed." The font must never go below 8.5 in size.

The lines that box in the ads usually have a stroke weight of .75 px or 1 px. Any lines that occur inside of the ad must be smaller, and are either .5 px or .75 px, depending on the outside box. The line weight depends on the size of the ad; bigger ads have thicker lines and smaller ads have thinner lines.

When creating these, I must also be aware of the placement of the photograph. There should be a little bit of space between the top of the woman's head and the top of the ad. The wall to the left of the stairs should always be slightly visible. It mostly boils down to what looks good.

The "My Degree, My Way" text should be in a good position on the photo, too. It should usually sit in between the lines of the stairs so that it can be seen clearly.

There are also several different official college logos to choose from, and this depends on the size and overall design of the ad. If there is a good amount of open space, the full-sized logo can be used. If there is not, the rectangular logo can be.

When typing out the times of information session dates, if one has a ":30" in it, all other times without it should have a ":00" at the end. If not, then it will simply say "4 p.m.", for instance. Also, 12 p.m. is always written as "noon."

These are only a few examples of the branding rules. There is actually an entire book that talks about the things that the college's designers should follow. I have looked through this book myself and it definitely had some size to it.

Moving Forward

I have been finding out that part of my learning experience will be making mistakes. I have made a few on occasion, and as a result I have learned from them. When I make one and then find out how to correct it, the chances of me making the same one again are lower. So, in a way, it is actually kind of beneficial, if that makes any sense.

Since my last update, I have been editing and creating a lot of college ads, as usual. However, I have also learned about what happens when a brand new ad campaign starts. When this happens, a designer (Gael Fischer) will come up with a basic layout design; sort of like a sketch. The design goes through some refinement, and when it looks good enough it will be used as the main template for all of the ads in the campaign. In other words, each ad for, say, a particular series directed at undergraduate students will look generally the same. All that really gets changed is the size of each one (depending on what it will print as), and objects on the page are adjusted accordingly.

Something that was very interesting to me was sending completed ads off to publishers. I did this with several. The college deals with a lot of publishers, and almost everything is done through email. Each publisher has different prices for taking up space on their pages (newspapers, magazines, etc.), and the college purchases some spaces and then creates the ads. When ads are finished, they are emailed to the publisher as a PDF file, which requires converting the InDesign file.

It can get pretty hectic when a lot of deadlines are piling up. Although each ad goes through a rigorous proofing process involving multiple people, the publisher might want something changed quickly after they receive the email, which was something I experienced.

The proofing process is quite interesting, too. It seems like a good example of office flow, which is another thing that I have been learning about. There are writers who write the actual text that will appear in the ad, and they need to look the ad over once the designer has a tentative one. There is also someone who makes sure the dates and locations are correct (many of the ads deal with college information sessions).

Every Empire State College ad follows the same general set of rules. The college was "branded", or given a unique identity by a design firm. The designs must adhere to certain requirements for color, fonts and font sizes, stroke weight on lines, and so on. Each section of the college has its own color, too. For example, undergraduate ads contain orange and graduate ads will have a red theme. Once all of that is set and taken care of, this is where the designer's eye comes into play. I have learned that much of the design involved in these ads is about, quite simply, what looks good to the designer.

As promised, here are some pictures from a typical adventure to the Saratoga Springs office.

The building's address on the stone wall that surrounds it.

A distant view of the building.

The main entrance.

The 1st of 3 flights of stairs that go to the 2nd floor.

My desk, 2nd floor of the building.

The walk back to my car. Autumn in Saratoga.

The Beginning

When I first arrived at the Saratoga Springs office on Friday, September 18, I had a pretty good idea about what I would be doing that day. I knew that it would most likely involve working in the Adobe InDesign computer program, since Gael Fischer had me do some practice runs a couple days before (using my own artwork).

I was right, and I began by working in InDesign. I was editing some college advertisements that had been made previously by somebody else. Some of the information needed to be changed--simple stuff like dates and locations. This information was given to me on "spec sheets", and I took what was on those and put them into the ads. I also had to increase the "design integrity" of the ads, or make them look more pleasing to the eye. I adjusted the locations of images, text, frames, graphics, and whatever else was on the page. Basically, I lined everything up, made things even, and did that until it looked good to me (Gael called it having an "eye for design"). I then printed these ads in black and white and placed them in peoples' mailboxes in the office for approval.

On that day and other days, I went through a bunch of finished publications that Gael had designed and offered my suggestions on what I would change about them. We reviewed them at a later time and, for the most part, she liked what I had to say. It was quite a learning experience to go through them and try to figure out how she did things. I also shadowed her and watched her work on a design for a little while, too.

During many of the following days, I was color correcting photos in Adobe Photoshop. I came to the internship with a lot of experience in Photoshop, so this was easy for me. People send photos of themselves to be put in the college publications, and most of the time the picture quality is not so good. I resized, enhanced colors, sharpened, converted to CMYK (the colors used for printing), saved and often times placed the final images into the page layouts. Some things are printed in black and white, so some images needed to be converted to grayscale.

After placing the images into the layouts, I had to apply a text wrap to them. This literally allows text to wrap around an image, so that it does not overlap it. There are also minor adjustments that can be made to the text wrap, such as the amount of spacing that appears around the image.

I also had to fine tune a lot of things in the text with InDesign (one of the files was about 75 pages worth of layout). I believe this was for a booklet called All About Mentoring, which contained profiles and stories about a bunch of mentors at Empire State College.

In one of the booklets, there were also poems written by students, if I recall correctly. The person in charge of how they look wanted the text alignment and justification changed, so I had to do that. One thing I did was create a custom tab setting (this determines how much space is made when the "tab" key is pressed) and moved each line of the poems to a different location on the pages.

And finally, one of the most fun things I have done so far was some photo manipulation. Somebody had designed an advertisement, called How to Deal with Difficult People, and had inserted a black and white photo of a man with a funny expression. He had red eyes and big red devil horns. The higher-ups did not approve of this, so I was given the task of completely removing the horns and making it look like he had hair and skin in those spots. I also converted the image to grayscale to get rid of the red. I definitely think I was successful with this, and made it look like those things were never there. I tweaked the ad a little bit, printed it, and put it in a mailbox for proofing.

That is basically how the first 5 days went. In the next posts, I will try to include some pictures.

A Practicum in Graphic Design

Hello, and welcome to my Empire State College internship blog, which will be written for a course I am currently doing called Digital Storytelling. If you are a student, part of the faculty, staff, or a prospective student of the college, you might be interested in reading this. Future employers and, of course, anyone with a curiosity might find it enjoyable, too. I will be telling personal stories from my time as an intern at the college, in a sort of documentary style. I will also try to get some pictures of where I go, and maybe even some shots of what I work on.

I am currently in the process of doing the internship right now, and will be for the remainder of the fall 2009 term (September 14 to December 23). The plan is to go for 10 hours each week, with the hours split into 2 days. I will also be earning 4 course credits for it upon its completion. The official name for it is Practicum in Graphic Design.

So, yes, I am also an undergraduate student at the same college. I have been told that I am the first student there to have an in-house internship, and I feel very lucky to have such an opportunity. I have no doubt that it will help me prepare for the work that I am interested in doing after college.

When setting up this blog, I made it somewhat match the other blog I have (which serves as a virtual gallery for my artwork). This includes template, colors, layout, and various settings.

This blog will, hopefully, give readers an interesting glimpse into this part of my life. If not, I know that I will personally enjoy looking back on it in the years to come. It will be a good reminder of what I did during my time at college.

The internship is split into two sections, meaning that I will be in one place for the first half of the fall term and in another for the second half (give or take). So far, during the first half, I have been working for one of the college's only designers, Gael Fischer. She designs all of the publications, and everything she does gets printed in the college's very own print shop. This includes advertisements, posters, booklets, pamphlets, brochures, and more. I help out with any editing or designing that she wants me to do.

For the second part, I will be going over to work in the aforementioned print shop. Gael's office and the print shop are in two separate college buildings, and both are located in Saratoga Springs, NY. At the shop, they print what Gael sends them and the publications are then sent all over the world. So, if you have ever received a brochure or anything similar from Empire State College, that is how and where it was made!