Social Networking

Maybe its because social media has been quickly changing over the last few years, but no one at my school told me how important social networking could be. It can be difficult to network in a distant city. I experienced that myself at the end of my college career. I knew I would be headed back to Wichita, but did no know anyone in my line of work except the design studio I had interned at the summer before. Perhaps if I had learned about tools like linked in and behance sooner I would have been able to utilize those sites to my advantage.

Social networking can be a great tool, but it cannot beat meeting people face to face. Using social media can help you get that foot in the door, as long as you are representing yourself in a positive manner. Potential employers are going to google you so you should make sure there us nothing that degrades your digital appearance. Also making sure you have a uniform look and style at all your online media will help to brand yourself. Using a blog can be a great way to show a lot of personality and knowledge in your line of work. It helps if all you'd social tools link back to one another to help create connections and can simplify the steps a potential employer has to take as well as help design their experience.

Tasty Wedding Favors

Wedding season is upon us (3 recent weddings have already come and gone for me and 5 more to come this summer). So I have just been keeping my out on things that I am loving about this wedding season. Edible Favors! Favors can be a pain that your guests don’t want to have nick knack around their house, well edible favors can be a change for your guests to take with them some of the feeling of your wedding day, while not being a permanent fixture in their homes. 

Edible gifts don’t have to be the same old tulle wrapped package of after dinner mints or colored m&ms. These favors can extenuate your wedding day with color, patterns, or replications of your dress or wedding cake.  A very simple way of helping your favor to feel like the rest of your wedding is using stationary. Using stickers, tags, or labels is an easy way to make it fit in with the rest of your wedding. Use similar typography that you used for your wedding invitation, and same paper stock if you can.

I did this for my own wedding. My husband and I love hot cocoa so we made our own mix and poured it into miniature bottles, and then tied tags to them with the invitation paper and coloring, as well as using sparkling ribbons that matched the centerpieces. Favors can be a simple way to show your guests how much you appreciate their presence at the wedding. Favors can often be a nuisance to some guests, which is perhaps why I have not received a favor at any of the weddings I have been at so far.

With scrapbooking becoming increasingly popular there are many cutters and other tools to help you achieve a custom look with little effort, or at least less effort and smaller cost than using a printer to die-cut or using an exacto to cut each piece out. Cutting using the tools is less difficult as long as you use a paper that is not too thick. I used 200 lb paper, so the scrapbooking tool was not meant for something so thick, but for cardstock of 80-110 lb. Keep that in mind when you are choosing paper and tools for customization.

Photography from theKnot.com

Sweet Tart and Spring Rains

Strawberry Rhubarb Tarts. Jealous? Life is best when I am wearing my apron covered in flour making some baked good as the Kansas storms roll by outside. If you want the recipe just let me know, and I will be happy to share it with you.

 

And excuse the look of the blog right now, Blogger and I are fighting. I may just have to take the extra effort and code my blog.

Graduation Day

A year ago I was preparing to graduate from the University of Kansas filled with hope for the future. Imagining that soon enough I would land a new job in Wichita with a design studio and do amazing logos and do all the fun hipster graphic design things. I would get married and we would live in apartment, and then make enough money to get a house with a white picket fence and dog. Well it would be 6 months before I did get a job. During that time I became very disheartened that I could not land a job, because I was not good enough. No agencies or studios in Wichita seemed interested. I had taken some long trips, just to interview in Kansas City. I would make it to the last round, but failed to have the experience necessary. No one wants to give you the chance to gain experience. It is risky for a business to hire someone with little to no experience. I did finally get a job. At first it seemed like something different that what I wanted, but that is why they say don't judge a book by its cover.

I began working with car ads, but little by little I proved that I was up to the challenge of doing more. I have created a logo for a company and preparing to work on more collateral pieces. I have had opportunities to expand my illustration skills, do billboards, t-shirts, emails, and some flash work. I am really grateful for the opportunities that my company has given me. It has been to be appreciated for what I do, and I have proven to myself that I am capable of doing graphic design work that can be appreciated at the professional level. I enjoy my fellow employees, and I think that this company can go far. I am really excited about the opportunities that lay before me. So, I still have some of that hope that I had a year ago, but maybe with a bit more wisdom.

Much like high school, not being able to prepare me for college; nor was college able to prepare me for the professional workforce. It did give me the tools and a basic foundation, but my toes where barely even in the water. I guess it is a lot like freshman year with my Design 1 course. I dabbled in the programs and made simple layouts, but by senior year I could see my immature work and its failings. I can look back at my student portfolio and see things I wish I had done differently. I know that my skills have improved. I hope to continue to improve them, because you are really never done learning. Thanks for making me a better designer, and to better understand my craft.

I wished I had engaged in blogging when I had the chance. I am currently struggling to change my actions towards social media, blogging, podcasting, ect… I can’t help to think if I had taken this more seriously when it was REQUIRED for me to blog, listen to podcasts, and social network (for work). So if you are still in school, don’t take what the make you do for granted; you might regret it later. I would have been much better off if I had used the opportunities that the university had given me.

It's a Jungle Out There

Need to make an impact? These guerrilla marketers make it happen. I love the work done by CURB. They claim themselves to be the natural media company, and with many of their tactics there is little impact on the environment compared to traditional methods, but there is a massive impact on the audience’s relationship with this marketing technique. They inject these designs into a public space, forcing the everyday person to interact with your marketing idea. 

Marketing like this seems like the new way to grab the public’s attention, but if it is not well planned out marketing like this could be devastating to a company. (Think about the music boxes in the newspaper stands, people thought they were bombs and were calling bomb threats in all over the city, what a nightmare!) One big issue with marketing like this is to make sure you have all the legalities taken care of. It would be disappointing to spend so much money on marketing and implementation to get slapped with a huge fine. With these designs being “environmental,” we need to consider the impact on the environment. That is what I liked so much about the sea life marketing. CURB used seawater to temporarily create advertisement for an aquarium (also very fitting for the company they were marketing for). Seawater evaporates more slowly than water, but will eventually disappear so there is little impact on environment, no legal forms, and a big impact on the community (especially with the use of scuba men as the taggers)

Another design that made me laugh, because it made me look twice at the surroundings was Hewlett Packard use of paper “holes.” A way to promote HP papers and inks it shows a realistic hole so that the environment surrounding the hole looks fake. It is not only great marketing ploy because it makes you want to inspect more closely, but it forces the viewer to look at the surrounding environment as well. This makes me want to do some guerilla marketing of my own. I wonder when my opportunity will arise.

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/holes-in-the-backdrop-ad-campaign-by-hp