The Portfolio Photographers

This week in portfolio our professors had two professional photographers come in and give presentations about their photographs and processes. Each one showed us pictures of past communications design projects that they've taken, explained different set-up, lighting and prop options, and counseled us on how to prepare for our own shoot. Kinda scary. It's coming up fast and I have a lot to do. Everything I need photographed must be perfected in only a little over a month. Hoo boy.

The thing is, those pictures look AMAZING. When you see how beautiful the projects look when professionally shot you realize, it HAS to be a professional. I could never take such gorgeous pictures on my own. I don't have the camera, the lights, the props and most importantly, the know-how. These guys have done this before, and they'll do it again for me.

Other than photography, tea is still on my mind. My Bigelow redesign project is proving to be a lot of fun. In my critique last week my professor told me to ditch most everything about the old packaging. He said that it was ugly (true) and that the awful design of it trumped any kind of brand equity that the product currently has. I'm taking him at his word on that one. I think there's something to the big titles and the bold solid colors. As a compromise I'm keeping the shape of the logo and the use of colors to classify the teas, or at least keeping the colors that are already delineated to the flavors.

The interesting thing about the Bigelow brand is that it is very American, which is kind of rare with tea. Even if the company is American, a lot of time tea tries to look either British or Asian. Bigelow is a family owned company, and they own the only American tea plantation. Therefore, I'm trying to incorporate a bit of "American" into the packaging. Nothing over the top. No stars and stripes (yet). But I am now researching what style or imagery subtly but solidly communicates the American-ness of a product. Old painted barns, quilts, denim, flannel plaid... we'll see what fits and what sticks.

Packaging! Oh my!

My Tibetan Yak Dairy project is wrapping up. I struggled for most of the project to get it to a point that I liked, and I think after this last week's critique I got it! Now I just have to wrap up the details for the packages and ads and work on a point of purchase display for this project.

For my next project my professor recommended that I attempt a redesign of an already existing project. He says that even though possible employers like seeing our crazy ideas in projects, they can relate much better and judge our skills more accurately when applied to an actual client. That makes a lot of sense to me. Therefore my next project will be spiffing up Bigelow teas. I'm very excited. I love tea, and I LOVE constant comment. I had no idea that that's the flavor that started the whole company. That's a great thing about this major. You never stop learning about such a  variety subjects.

Personal Branding

This week we've got a really exciting assignment for our portfolio prep class. We get to start creating our own personal identities! It's something we're all both excited and a little intimidated to do. It's like creating one's own horoscope. If done right, it accurately portrays to the world Me. Who am I? What does it mean to people when someone says my name? How can I put Me into a tiny little symbol on a page. What part of Me is most important to focus upon?

I'm currently just pumping out all the ideas I can think of. Just for fun this week I think I'll send the first drafts to my family and my fiance and see which ones they think are closest.

And the job search begins...

This week we started job searching in earnest. We've had only two portfolio prep classes, but we're already organizing and augmenting our portfolios, researching design firms and calling them up to scope out prospects. I've never job hunted like this before. I've done summer jobs, and I've done internships, but this is definitely more stressful. I get to find companies I want to work for in cities I want to live in, but then I have to put myself out there, call them up and maybe not get such a nice answer.

The nice thing about this is that we're doing this so early. This is the first week I've done this, and I'm a bit choppy, but I'm already learning some tricks, and I feel more confident every time I call someone up. Looks like there's a method to our professors' madness.

This week for my packaging design project I'm making preliminary designs in different graphic directions. This time around I'm packaging a line of Tibetan Yak Dairy products. If I do one design that is whimsical, I might want to focus on a more ethnic approach to another, and maybe another that is more upscale-foodie.

I'm slow-going this week, but I hope it packs up in time. I think it takes me a bit to get in the zone after I've been on vacation. Though I'll miss vacations when I get a real person job, I think it'll be nice in one way to be able to get into a steady groove in an office.

Last but not least, my only elective this semester is really starting to get fun. I'm taking an independent study with a professor I had last semester. He's letting me sit in on a web design class he teaches at Newhouse. It's exciting and interesting to see how web design is taught to this bunch of journalists and media-people. I'm used to being in creative classes with kids from the Art and Design program here. The Newhouse kids bring in whole different perspectives as to what to focus on in a design. This week we discussed successful navigation in a web site and are beginning our first forays into the world of HTML coding. We learned how to code different heading sizes, paragraph breaks and text alignment. Basic stuff, but we're taking baby steps. It's like learning a language. I can't wait to see where this goes!