Fine Arts Career Services

This week was exciting because I finally got to print out my business cards at O.Max.  S and I went to a paper store to buy some papers for our business cards before we headed to O.Max..  S told me that it was important for us to pick recycled papers to show that we care about our environment.  I was surprised to see how less selectivity that we had for recycled papers at a paper store.  There were more colors with different textured papers available for regular papers.  I found it sad because it made me to wonder that people still do not care much about our environment.

We were able to pick light gray and light olive colored papers at a paper store.  We printed out one of each sheet to test, and we liked a light olive colored paper better.  It was eye catchy; light gray and brown color looked good on the paper.  Printing out my business card was a long process at O.Max. because the staff there wanted to make sure that the ink on the paper came out right.  He printed out many times to make sure we like it.  I was glad that the staff at O.Max. was very helpful.  Finally, I have more than 100s of my own business cards!

S printed out my business card on a sheet of paper again this week.  I like to see it on a sheet of paper to make sure that I like it because I know the image will look different in a computer screen or on a sheet of paper.  I really hoped that I will like it this time, however, I disliked it again.  I used Japanese text of the company name in my business card to make it look different and creative.  It looked odd and did not made sense to me to use Japanese text of the company name on there.  I told myself that maybe I should just not use any Japanese text at all because I felt like I was struggling from it.  I played with the size of logo for couple hours to see if I can come up with different designs.  Again, I did not like any of the design that I came up with.  Well, maybe I should add Japanese text of my title and name too, so it will make more sense for me to use Japanese text.  I tried to play with different Japanese font and size for some hours.  Finally, I came up with one design.  It looked better and made more sense to me.  I was happy to come up with a design of my business card that I can even use in Japan too.

S asked me to design her website better at the beginning of my internship.  I have never studied about websites, so I hesitated a little.  However, I told myself that I should take this opportunity to learn how to design a website instead of saying her that I cannot do it.  I think I have used enough hours of my time on internet to be able to tell which website is well designed and which one is not.  I told S that I need to research of architects and engineers’ websites to learn how to design a professional engineer’s website.  S taught me some good websites of certain architects and engineers, so I had a lot of fun doing a research about them.  Most of their websites were simple and not flashy like a fashion designer’s website.  After doing a research for some hours, I came up with some ideas, such as size of the logo, color and size of font and place of links to jump to other pages.  I sketched images of my ideas on papers to show her my ideas.

I learned the image of photos or text can look different when I created my art portfolio, so I asked S to print out my business card for me before we bring it to the printer.  S gave me a hard copy of my business card next day.  Then I asked myself that does it look presentable, and do I like it?  The answer was “No! “  I told myself that I know you can make it to look better.  My assignment for this week was editing my business card.  I played with making a logo bigger, however I did not think Japanese text looked good in it because a big logo and Japanese font were fighting.  So I asked myself if I should take out Japanese text and make a logo bigger.  Well, I still wanted some Japanese text in my business card as my experiment.  I want to see how American may act on it when they saw some Japanese text in my business card.  I decided to take out my name in Japanese text, but I left the company name in Japanese.  It looked better, I thought.  Again, I asked S to print out my business card last night.

I worked on my business card this week.  Stephanie said that my business card can be creative.  It does not have to be formal, so I decided to use Japanese characters in my business card.  There were some limitations again, such as we only had one ink, and a few choices of printing papers.  Whenever I see limitations, I tell myself to challenge myself.  I should learn how to be creative in any kind of situation.

I have always wanted to take a class in typography.  I find it deep, complicated and interesting.  It has a lot of effect on human’s psychology.  Some fonts are easily read, but some are not.  Letters can give people sound not just reading letters.  Using Japanese and English letters together in my business card made me to think about visual and sound effects a lot.  First, I typed every information in English, then I decided which information to type in Japanese.  I decided to choose the name of the company and my name.  I made one Japanese word to be bold and arch because it looked like it had a roof, column and floor.  I picked that word to use it as a symbolic figure of a building.  Then I wondered how many people can see it as a symbolic figure of a building.  I really hope to take a typography class soon.

I worked to finalize the design of TsenStructural’s business card this week.  Stephanie found a typo on my design and also told me to make the font bigger.  I thought this week was going to be an easy week, however, Photoshop on my Mac was acting up that made me to get really frustrated.  Whenever I tried to save my Photoshop file into JPG, it created scratch marks on my image.  I asked myself that how come the image I have been working on look dirty.  I tried to use an eraser to make it look cleaner for some hours.  Click, click, click, click and more clicks…  I wondered if there is a better way to make it clean while I clicked my mouse.  Finally, I decided to create a new file hoping that it will not make a mess like last time.  It took me couple hours to finish a new file, but it worked.  It looked better than the other image that got scratch marks on, I thought.  I fixed my typo, and I made the font bigger.  Stephanie told me that she wanted a PDF and JPEG file of her business card, so I created both files for her.  I am waiting to hear her feed back again; I hope it will be okay this time.

This week I worked on to revise my boss, Tsen Structural’s business card because Stephanie told me that we can only use black and gray ink.  Recently, I was painting different tone of gray in my painting class, so my paintings made me to visualize different tone of our business card in my head.  I created black, gray, medium gray and light gray logos, and used black font for personal and company’s information.  My favorite one was light gray logo.  She told me that I do not need to type in the company name in our business card because the logo contained name of the company already.  However, because the color of logo was light gray, and it was little harder to read the company name than black logo, I added the company name in text part of our business card.  Now I am waiting to hear her feed back.

From our last week, I was really happy to hear that Stephanie turned in our brochures to her prospect client.  She has not told me that she got a job from the client or not.  I hope she will get a project from them.

After I submitted my brochures to Stephanie, she came back to me to revise a banner by adding her logo and information in it.  Also she wanted to change a layout of them by using bigger photos.  I hesitated a little because it was after 7PM, and I just got back from school.  I was tired since it was in the middle of the week.  However, I knew that she had to finish it by this Thursday night, so I decided to help her out.  I know it is important to finish my work on time.  It took me some hours to edit a banner by resizing it, changing the font and changing the layout.  I also asked her if it looked okay for her couple times before I finished it.  It was nice that we worked together.  I enjoyed talking about how engineer’s brochures should look simple and flashy with her too.

We decided to discuss our business card over a dinner meeting at Hyde Park Grill.  She liked the one that I liked less, and she told me why.  It made sense, so I did not argue with her.  Anyway, I was glad that she liked at least one of my business card.  Getting criticisms can be sometime difficult even though we need them to grow further.  Overall, I enjoyed our business dinner because having a business dinner made me to feel like I was back to work again.

Next day we visited a paper store near Highland Mall.   Papers that we got are 80 pounds.  When I touched it, it felt too thin for business card.  I think the one that I had when I was in Japan was heavier; maybe it was 120 pounds.  A staff at the paper store told me that it should be heavy enough for a business card.  People who work there were very helpful, and we were able to collect a few sample papers for our business card.

Stephanie told me that she got a new project for me last night.  It was to give her quick a design of brochure that she has to submit by this Mon for her client.  She showed me some samples of other engineers’ brochures to give me some ideas of how engineers`brochure to look like.  I used Pages this time to design it because I remembered my friend telling me that Pages can work great to design a brochure.  It was an easy software to play with too.  Therefore, I was able to create 3 samples of her brochures.