design thoughts

its been a while

life’s been busy. if i could send posts from my mind that would be great. i think about what i want to write alot but when it comes to actually sitting down and typing it out thats when time gets away from me. but i’m here, and things have been going well. let’s recap whats been going on.

interning has been going great. some of the things i’ve worked on for the manufacturing plant should be getting printed soon, which will make me very happy and excited. :) we met with the printer the other day to discuss it and get estimates, that was very exciting. but other than that i’ve just been working on some fun projects, learning everyday, and having fun. 

my other job (most people refer to it as the cake place) has been good too. i’ve been adjusting to working later hours than what i used to work but it’s been good. if you’re curious on what i do there i’ll summarize it.. i set up and clean up classes, which means i bake, make icing, wash dishes, and do lots of cleaning. this week i baked 13 cakes and made over 15 pounds of icing with in a two day period of time. its more fun than it can sound. some people don’t know but cake, baking, and decorating is something i love almost as much as i love design. cake decorating is really just design using a different medium. it’s really fun to me. 

other things i’ve been up to are learning to make pie (i can now make tasty pie crust), hanging out with friends, spending time with family, looking for a new apartment, and taking care of my new fish. his name is grover if you’re curious. 

i’m going to go play in illustrator now. :)

adventures of intern 2

its been over a month, i just realized, since i’ve told about my adventures as intern 2. hmmm…whats been going on….

well if you didn’t know yet, us interns have a desk in cubicle now. we have a lovely mac (named mac, by intern 1). we got a phone, so we get calls now. we stuck splats to our wall, then we were just informed last week that the walls were just painted, so i carefully peeled to splats off and moved them to the metal shelf. we have a nametag that intern 1 made, which has thing 1 and thing 2 from dr. seuss relabeled as intern 1 and intern 2. intern 1 got me hooked on the show greek recently, so we also have a picture of cappie from greek hanging up. other than that the desk is pretty bare other than a couple toys of hers, some gum bottles and packages of xtremes and i have a stack of splats on one of our shelves. its really nice having a desk though. i came in today to find a note from intern 1, full of randomness. its awesome. 

this week most of the office is at a candy trade show in chicago, so last week me and katie were tasked with filling over 200 flashdrives with data. it was a very long friday, but we got it done just in time because we are awesome like that. the AC for the building broke this week (its fixed now) making for a very warm start to the week. so that was this weeks adventure.

last week me and the manufacturing intern completed the floor splatting. the plant now has colored trails of splats running through it. i need to get down there to try to take some pictures sometime soon. that was a very long afternoon of crawling along the floor sticking vinyl to it. i think it looks pretty fun though now that its complete. 

other than that, i’ve finished up some mocks of projects and waiting for approval on them so that i can complete those, and i also made a bunch of huge airheads bars last week that are super fun. :)

that’s pretty much the catch up on whats been going on. 

intern 2 (aka intern bravo)

i’ve completely lost track of time. so i’ve ended week 3 which is where i left off, completed weeks 4 and 5, and started week 6. 

week 3 finished up well. i can now say what we did with the airheads dough. we had someone step in it to make footprints. we then photographed the footprints and i spent pretty much the rest of the week editing them in photoshop to be different colors. 

during week 4 i finished up the different colors of footprints and called to get an estimate for having the footprints printed as vinyl graphics for the floor. the estimate came back and we are unable to do the footprints because the cost is too high. so we are back to the splats. which leads us to week 5. but one other thing i did week 4 was take some new gum to target and photograph it on the gum rack. that was kind of fun. and everyone said my picture of it looked really good. so that was fun.

week 5: week 5 was spent learning the vinyl cutter and cutting out splats. i have 5 different shaped splats and 5 different colors that i am working with and making them various sizes. it was fun to finally learn the vinyl cutter and it was handy that someone told me where to get the manual for it so i figured out how to get my images imported that way. so now i have all the splat files set up efficiently in the cutting software so i’m pretty proud of that. so me and the other intern (dan) have been working on those. i cut them, he peels the extra vinyl off. then i have to cover them with clear vinyl and cut them out bigger. so that was what i did on friday and started week 6 off with. 

its been really fun working at pvm. everyday brings some new adventure. which keeps it interesting and good.

week 2 and onto week 3

so week 2 went by unspoken about…oops. i’m not perfect..

week 2 as intern 2 was spent working on floor graphics, waiting on emails, hanging posters, working with other other intern (dan in manufacturing), playing event photographer, and touring the factory! 

touring the factory: was awesome! i felt like i was on the food network, i had a “behind the scenes” all inclusive tour, i freaked out like a little kid a few times, i could probably watch xtremes be made all day because they look amazing while being made, and it was super fun touring and learning. :) 

playing event photographer: monday was a 10 years as perfetti van melle event for the employees and they got to get every candy pvm makes and then have lunch. it was pretty cool and i got to take the photos. the best was seeing grown adults getting excited about different candy. it was a pretty fun event. hopefully the pictures came out good. 

hanging posters: there were some posters of photos and products from other countries that we had printed for monday’s event that we had printed high quality so i could hang then in the manufacturing plant with a world map that has already been there. so tuesday i went out and got the velcro and stuck it to the posters and then got dan (other other intern) to help me hang them. let me just say i learned that day that its a little hard to work with non creatives and people who don’t really know how to use tools. but its ok because we got them hung and they look great. 

working on floor graphics: i spent tuesday also making splats for the floor. the idea of the splats was to be fun and make a path. so i made some pretty fun splats in illustrator but then could never actually connect with the people i needed to get together with to learn the vinyl cutter. but its ok, because this week brought something new for the floor. 

week 3 is this week. its been a fun week. this week i met with a freelance illustrator, i got us a bucket of airheads dough, and we did something fun with the dough, and today i spent editing said fun airheads dough project.

the freelance illustrator is very excitable, has ideas (i’m not terribly certain what they are yet), is full of excitable energy. thats good for this project, but was a little over whelming and i wasn’t sure how to handle that on a early monday afternoon. but she seems to have some good ideas and should be fun to work with and get project elements from. 

tuesday deidre and i were talking about the some graphics and discussing something we thought would be fun to make, but we were going to need to get some airheads dough for it to become reality. so i sent an email to someone who sent an email to someone and with in a couple hours i got to walk down the hall and say guess what, we’re getting dough. i took a container down and came back with it full of warm, fresh off the line airheads dough. it resulted in us squealing a little bit, freaking out a bit, staring at it not sure what to do, eating pieces of it (its soo good, warm gooey and super flavored), then finally doing what we got it for. (everyone is still a little shocked i think that i managed to get dough off the line)

i love working in graphics and creativity. you can do seemingly crazy things and no one really questions it. 

seriously that may have been one of the funnest things i’ve done there yet. i’m super excited for what we did with it and i think its going to turn out great. :) i don’t want to say what we did until its finished but its definitely fun.

soo its definitely been fun at pvm and i love it. i can’t wait for this project to really come to life. 

day 3

a few days behind on this one, but day three was wednesday.

i worked on the graphics for the plant floor and walls only to find out that i have to start over on them, but that’s actually ok. i also found out that i get to pick what vinyl i want the graphics cut out of and i think i get to do the installation of them. which i am weirdly really excited about.

i also started trying to get in contact with the school that i would like to work with to do the illustrations for the project. i’m really excited and anxious to get these illustrations so that i can this project really moving.