Posted June 2, 2009 5:49 pm.
Filed under: clients, daily happenings, first times, lessons learned, mistakes
Tags: intern, problem-solving, progress, responsibilities
I started my internship at MINE™ not really sure of what to expect. I knew their work, a handful of the previous interns, and had Christopher as a teacher in my GD2 class at CCA – but becoming an employee was beyond my foresight. Would I be serving tea all day? Doing the laundry? Asked to fix the roof? I’ve heard horror stories from interns at other firms but I kept my hopes up and looked forward to doing some actual designing alongside the caffeine duties (hopefully not roofing).
I’m pleasantly surprised at the amount of responsibility I’m trusted with. Today for example – I helped design and finish two deliverables for two different clients. One being a full page ad for the Stern Grove Festival and another being a series of letterhead templates for another client. I was given the task of learning the iWork “Pages” software, and simultaneously finding out a way to customize the templates so that the client can easily prepare a letter in the software she is most comfortable with.
Not every day is as heavy on the production of course. Some standard duties are keeping the office organized, filing, corresponding through the intern email address and answering phones. But so far – I’m really enjoying the responsibility I’ve been granted at MINE™ and I can’t wait to get my feet wet with some more jobs as soon as they come. The tea here is pretty good too. (and gladly I have not seen the roof yet)
Posted May 14, 2009 5:30 pm.
Filed under: first times, inspiration, thursdays
Tags: hort, nathan cowen, neil donnelly, portfolio, progress
Every Thursday at MINE™ we take some time out from the work day, enjoy lunch together and share some things we’ve recently been inspired by. On this particularly sunny day in Bernal Heights, we relaxed in the backyard and indulged in some Indian pizza from local restaurant Zante’s.
Having a ritual like the Thursday lunch is another one of the really great aspects of working at MINE™. It’s a chance to get to know each other from a different vantage point – not from behind a desk or under the pressures of a strict deadline. The opportunity to recline in the back patio underneath the trees, talk loosely about design and life in general, and take a much deserved break from the work we’ve been putting in was a nice breath of fresh air and a tradition I’m looking forward to upholding.
After we had our fill of Indian pizza (pretty incredible by the way) we headed back downstairs and I showed some of my most recent work to Christopher and Tim. I was pleasantly surprised with the range and scope of the work I’ve done at CCA. It’s not every day that I pull out all of the pieces and look at them as a body of work. The progression from Level 1 to current work was pretty startling – assignments that seemed stressful and challenging at the beginning of my design education look simple and almost trivial now. I suppose those feelings are evidence of my own progress as a designer – and I’m sure I’ll have similar feelings in a few years when I look at the work I’m doing now. I can only hope to keep progressing and learning and challenging myself with every new project.
Some really nice work that has been inspiring me lately is by the studio Hort in Berlin. They do some really unexpected and beautiful things with type and lo-fi imagery that are really discordant and dynamic (Nathan Cowen, a CCA grad works there as well! See his work here). Also check out the gorgeous print work by Neil Donnelly.
