Blog 2: Diving in Head First
Graphic Designers: Masters of Branding and Communication
Week one has finished! What an exciting first week it has been for me. Because of some last minute changes to my internships, I spent a portion of the week solidifying my plans for the duration of my project, which included two very productive and encouraging meetings with my advisors. The first was with Tim Devey. As I mentioned before, Tim is a graphic designer with his own marketing business that does work for many different companies. I met with him on Monday to discuss first steps and really just to dive right in. He gave me my first project to work on with a flexible deadline of the following Monday (today)–more on that later. I also met with Sadie Sarti at her office and even got to meet a couple of her employees as they came in for work. We discussed the capacity to which I would be involved with their client work, how and what I could learn, and other technical things. The meeting went very well, and I am going to intern at Sadie Sarti Design Co. every Tuesday and Thursday from 9am to 12pm, starting this Thursday. I will be spending most of my time shadowing the employees there and performing tasks–answering the phones, learning how the business is run, etc. I am very excited for anything and everything that they will have me do and learn!
Back to the project that Tim gave me–I was tasked to design some flyer inserts for one of the companies that he is involved with called Organic Grains. Here is a link to the website: https://organicgrains.com/. These flyer inserts are basically the thank you notes you might get in a package from a business that you’ve online ordered from. During our meeting to discuss the assignment, I learned so much, especially pertaining to the beginnings of a design project. Tim taught me what a creative brief is, as well as a brandbook. A creative brief is a document outlining the details of your project, including the description, size, goal, budget, deadline, etc. A brandbook is basically a company’s guide to marketing. It is all the rules of their brand and how they advertise themselves. This will usually include the brand colors, typography, how the logo can and can’t be used, the company’s mission and aesthetic, and other miscellaneous materials that should be included. A company may already have one (as was my case) or they may be just starting out and need someone to come in and create that for them.
With all of this information, I was ready to get started. I made three designs in total, playing around with different design aspects and troubleshooting a lot. As per Tim’s suggestion, I started by sketching and brainstorming some layout ideas. I came up with several, and then took them to the computer. I was working in Adobe Illustrator, which is, from what I’ve heard so far, the most commonly used Adobe application amongst graphic designers. In Illustrator, everything is vector-based, meaning that your graphics can be scaled to any size, big or small, without having to worry about the resolution. I worried that I would have a hard time coming up with layout ideas, but the biggest challenge I faced was working in Illustrator. I haven’t had much practice in it, so I ran into several issues where I would have to pause what I was doing, research solutions, and finally find an answer to solve my very specific problem. It was at times tedious, but ultimately very educational. I am very happy with how my project is starting and can’t wait to tell you all about my next design project!
Below, along with a picture, is a PDF of one of the designs I created for the flyer insert. Note: the cursive font used is not the final font–I need the correct one installed on my computer before it will be complete. And there are a few small icons missing that I don’t yet have available to include with the contact info.
Organic_Grains_Flyer_Insert_1 copy
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