happy easter friends.

what i’m looking at:

Can I Have Your Card?

A few weeks ago the AIGA Chattanooga Chapter hosted a Student/Professional “Mixer” at local creative agency, Tubatomic. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet and mingle with local professionals in the design community. The previous week we held our monthly AIGA Student Chapter meeting. The topic of the meeting was Networking of course, to prepare us for the upcoming Mixer. We had visitors from Widgets and Stone and also a freelance designer to give us some hints on how to network with professionals. One conversation led to another and all the information was very helpful. (Especially the point that “everybody poops”….hey I shouldn’t be nervous after all!)

Designed by The Beth Joseph!

One point that was also strongly advised was to have a “Bussiness” card, or some kind of card to exchange that had your contact information on it. Naturally I think, “Um ok…I’m a student. What the hec would I be doing with a business card?” The mere thought of handing someone a card with my name/information on it seemed so awkward and pretentious, but at the same time a good idea. What if someone is looking for an intern? So as much as I dreaded the thought, I decided to sit down and make one. I decided to hand write my information (no need to be super serious, I am in fact a student…and it’ll save time on choosing the perfect typeface!)  So I wrote out my personal info with a personal touch. But it was lacking something. Color, interest, something! So I had the brilliant idea to print a pattern on the opposite side of the cards. I grabbed a couple of dresses from my closet that had nice and interesting patterns on them, scanned them in, and chose the best of the two to be the pattern for my wonderful little card.

Now this is where it gets interesting. I, being the girl that I am, had to be dressed appropriately for an event such as this. (“Not too much of course, I don’t want to look like I have stick up my butt, but I also don’t want to look like a slob either…”) There was a particular pair of heels I was dead set on wearing that evening and the only thing that seemed to go with them was….get ready for it…the dress that I took the pattern from. Horrified at the thought of having a card that matched my outfit, I decided that a) I had a ride that was waiting for me, therefor there was no time to change, and b) hey, maybe they won’t notice. A few of my friends assured me that it wasn’t such a bad thing. Turns out it was a good ice breaker and people really liked it! Hooray for happy accidents!  I’ll always be known as the girl the matching business card. Maybe I’ll have to keep it up….after all it is pretty memorable.

The dress that started it all

The card

Designed by The Beth Joseph!

The dress that started it all

Simple Pleasures

Every once and awhile it’s good to take a moment and think about all things in life that make you happy. A lot has happened in my life over the last few months. It’s been extremely busy and exhausting juggling schoolwork, projects, work, sorority obligations, friends, the drama that comes from friends, family, expenses, stress, break-ups, and a number of other things. During all this it’s easy to lose sight of what is important and special underneath all the noise.

I spent a load of time over the Christmas holiday thinking and relaxing. Now that I’m back at school and things are beginning to pick up speed again I have been thinking about all the little things that give me peace of mind. I find that making time to spend with my close friends is extremely important. We all have different majors ranging from art and design to biology/pre-med, social work, and history. There’s always something to talk about and good feelings to spread around. I’ve lost a couple of my friends this semester. Certain academic and health reasons caused one to have to move back home and my best friend of 11 years is going to be studying abroad in the Czech Republic.  Not having her around especially will be hard.

I have also made a promise to draw more often. I’ve drawn ever since I was little and I did it for fun then. Why not do it for fun now? I plan on trying to do a drawing everyday or close to it. It’s a good way to just let go and get away from the computer. Doing something creative and expressive that doesn’t involve file saving and vectors is a lovely release. I realized this last semester in my painting class.

I also plan on spending more time on my music. It got away from me last semester and became more of a chore than a hobby. I received a keyboard for Christmas and I hope it will inspire me to do more. I don’t know how to play the piano yet, but I hope to learn a little bit. (I did learn a little bit of “Silent Night” over the break!) I used to strive to be a really good singer, but in the last couple years I’ve let that fall by the wayside. I want to renew that spirit because it always left me feeling very accomplished.

So these are some of the simple things in my life that bring me great joy and peace of mind. I hope they don’t get lost in the mix of this semester. Instead of losing track of them, I hope to use them as fuel and inspiration for my daily life and work.

So fresh and so clean clean

I feel sooooooooooo much better! After spending the last 24 hours updating, posting, and revamping this silly blog, it’s finally done!

Things got a little crazy there at the end of 2009 and unfortunately blog posts fell pretty much by the wayside. Not to mention I hated my theme and didn’t think anything I had up here was worth anybody’s time or interest. (I’m pretty sure other than professors, my mom was the only one looking at this! That still may be the case, but oh well!) I now realize that even though I am a student, I have something to show people. I now have a space that I can really be proud of, and all it took was a little bit of time and effort.

Now with the new year at hand, I have slowly started to make progress towards a more confident, engaging, healthy, reliable, responsible me. I have a lot of plans for myself in 2010. None of the big changes will take place over night or in the first couple of months. But taking a small step is still a step, right?

This is going to be an interesting and exciting semester! I can’t wait to see what happens!

Field Trip to Williams Visual Solutions!

On Tuesday we, as a class, visited Williams Visual Solutions (http://www.wmsco.com/www).  Williams has been family owned and operated since 1947. It was started by Levie Williams and is now in the hands of his grandson, Bubba Williams. They work a lot within the Chattanooga community providing graphic communications. They are primarily a printer but also work with clients from the concept stage to design to completion.

They provide many different options for clients from digital printing to book printing and are Mac based. We had the opportunity to see all their different printers and plate makers. Digital printing was explained in full by their new business developer, David Smith. It was really interesting to see how the company has evolved since it was owned by Bubba’s grandfather. Not only did their business and technology expand, but also their facility.

They were super accommodating and it is clear that every member of the team is passionate about what they do as a company. They were even kind enough to provide us all with lunch! At the end of our time at Williams, they explained some of their future goals and plans and it seems that Williams Visual Solutions has a bright future in store for them. I can definitely say that this experience will certainly encourage me to use their services someday.

The Adventures of Class With No Proffessor: Episode 3

This is the fourth class without Leslie in town to teach us. We were visited by some of the front end developers/engineers including Stephen Bush (a former UTC student) and Noah Burney from Medium and Jason Fritz from Tubatomic.

They all had really awesome attitudes and introduced us to the behind the scenes work that goes into how a website looks. Meaning, they gave us a brief intro into HTML, XHTML, and CSS. All the technological stuff!

They started by explaining to us what different coding scripts mean and what they do. They explained the structure of the coding and differences between HTML, XHTML, and CSS.  We wrote some coding for a site that changed the text box color, background color, typeface, text size, leading, navigation bars, adding in images to be links in the navigation bars, etc.

The guys were really helpful and informative and definitely extremely intelligent. It’s so interesting to me how this kind of things comes to easily to some people and makes perfect sense. I am not sure how I personally feel I will react to it since this was only an introduction. Maybe it will totally work or maybe I am only meant to design…time will certainly tell!

The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Thursday we had the privilege of visiting the Chattanooga Times Free Press Newspaper. The tour was led by Frank Anthony the Vice President of Operations. Although my carpool arrived a few minutes late (it’s a common mistake to find one’s self at the office a few blocks down; according to the secretary), we didn’t get to miss much of Mr. Anthony’s history lesson of the Chatt Times. He was a friendly man who has been in the business for many, many years. He told us that he even apprenticed on an old Linotype machine when he first started in the news printing business!

We learned all about the evolution of the news printing press and how it has changed from handset type machines to Linotype, Washington press, Associated press, to the hand fed Platen press and on to the rotary press. The history of the building itself was fascinating. It was originally a  hosiery factory in the 1920′s and then switched to printing when seamed hose went out of fashion in the 1950′s. The building has about 40,000 square feet of solid maple floors! This was necessary to hold the heavy machinery. The cost of building that way today would be outrageous! The building holds 300 tons of dead weight (when machinery is not moving) and it is built on an isolated foundation to prevent cracking and crumbling to ground due to the vibrations of running machines.

One of the most interesting facts is that the Chattanooga Times Free Press has history tied to the New York Times. I can’t remember it exactly, but in the 1950′s the struggling newspaper of Chattanooga was bought by the McDonald family which also owned the New York Times, I believe. They brought the paper back to life and it was sold within the family, but still has roots to the renowned NY Times. How cool is that?!

We got to see all of their printers, or “image setters”. Because they rely so much on being fast and efficiant, they have a back up machine for every machine in the building. The image setters themselves cost $130,000…each. Over all the building holds 5-6 million dollars in spare equipment alone!

The actual newspaper printer was 37 feet long and 10 feet wide. It prints on 11,000 tons of paper a year! We didn’t get to see it in motion printing, but even so, it was still quite the sight to see! They have huge tanks of ink including three 3000 gallon tanks of black ink. The ink is water based as opposed to oil based so that it dries immediately and doesn’t smear.

There was so much more that we learned and saw but these are some of the points that stuck out to me. Thank you Chattanooga Times Free Press!

Feild Trip!! A Visit to Allegra Printing of Chattanooga

Tuesday we took a fabulous journey to Allegra printing company here in Chattanooga. We were warmly welcomed by Todd Oates. Todd started by describing the company and how they work. They are a small commercial shop and pride themselves on not being located in some random shopping center. They work business to business and have a pretty detailed filing system that contains all aspects of a job done for a client including the inks, paper, etc.

We met their in house Graphic Designer Heather Rickets. She talked about how they tend to receive work for a job that sometimes is less than…well sometimes they are terrible and don’t work. She’s had to completely remake logos and designs because of insufficient file sizes or file type. This can require additional time on a job of course and additional funding from the client. She said sometimes you just have to make it work, no matter what you get.

Then we go to the printers. They have printers that do jobs from full color printing, digital printing, signs, banners, posters, bindery and finishing, and all kinds of promotional printing. We were introduced to “Bonnie” and “Clyde’ the digital printers. They are exactly the same printers but have their own unique problems. All of the other printers were pretty much incredible. We got to watch a $30,000 printer make di-cuts on some stickers (that had our names on them!). My personal favorite was the printer that did the saddle stitching. It was pretty cool. I have never seen staples on a roll before! So cool!

So we went along got to see some more printers lamination machines and they were kind enough to make us personalized note pads and stickers and gave Allegra water bottles and a couple of other little gems. The best part was the people. They were really awesome and very kind and accommodating. Thanks Allegra!

The Adventures of Class with No Professor: Episode 2

Day Two: Web Media is left to fend for itself…

Today’s class was visited by Josiah Roe, president of Medium design and Bekka Reese a graphic designer at Medium (http://thisismedium.com/people/).

Josiah made a a presentation discussing information architecture, site maps, etc. and how the play huge role in their web site design process. The presentation included many examples of their work over the last year or two including sketches, drawn out wire frames, site maps, digital roughs, and of course, the finished products.

They gave us a lot of incite into how the actual design process works when working with clients who desire specific elements in their design and also how huge a project can really be. One specific example was the site that they are designing for a Japanese company that sells large engines and other sorts of equipment. They showed us only a small portion of the site map, but we were told that there were quite a few more. I cannot imagine working with that much content for a site and trying to make it easy to navigate and functional at the same time! No wonder it takes a team of designers and programmers and months to put the project together.

They also told us about how a beautiful design can be totally taken over by the company and changed into something it is not. I won’t name the site, but I will say they would have been much better off not making the changes that they did.

Josiah, even in his sleepy state, was kind enough to leave us with some excellent incite and some great resources on Basecamp.

Thank you Medium!