New Internship

From my work at American Century it has been an eye opening experience. The company is not only very friendly but gives a drive to design, that before this internship some of the process that I went throught was busy work. Within my first two weeks they have clarified what all of my teachers have been engraving into my head for the last two years. One of my favorite quotes was from Garret back in March or April; when he held up a brochure and said "this is no longer what designer's do".

People usually associate great design with good typography, and communicating an idea visually. While interning I found that design does not just up hold a visual quality but making create a universal message that people outside of the designer understand. So far, a well designed project is no longer a project but a way to communicate from one person to another. This is not dependent on the designer's "stylistics" choices of color, type faces, and structure, but to get past that point and understand the concept. From my understanding it is to communicating though interesting visuals, while being clearly navigated.

Through the past two years I have struggled with craft. One of my biggest weaknesses was to distance myself from rules and regulations that I was unsure about. Within my internship weeks I have made edits to "projects" which could range from flyers to data based info graphs. My job was to take one or two specific edits and apply to what the client wanted. This was a great experience for me because usually it was a typographic issue. I am starting to look at the small details and define not only what the client wants but how to look for them.

Another great experience I had was to watch how two corporations or companies combine together to present a new idea for the audience. Each company has their own identity and create new rules for others to follow. I can be ignorant to what exactly a "brand" means but through this conference, I started absorb the bigger message, this is means creating different methods in which the two different brands are executed. In all final critiques we give a "presentation" of the perception of the project brief. The truth is these "presentations" aren't just to make us verbalize our ideas but to give a description of, how we as designers created a deeper meaning. Within the meeting I listened to one aspect of a brand and compromising with other. One of the design problems I looked at was what is should be hierarchy. Should both brands have equal or one they are combined do they create a new design. This probably is not the typical design problem but to my understanding their is always a new problem and a diverse ways to execute it. When I walked into the meeting I was presented with variations but also variations of how that brand worked with others.