Homecoming.

You guys asked for it, so here s a quick rundown of my living conditions for my time in Atlanta. Feel free to stop by anytime. Enjoy!

My Atlanta Apartment from EWD Design Productions on Vimeo.

Taking a break.

Oh I am so enjoying my break so far. I feel like I am recovering from a 3-month hike up a never ending mountain. It was an absolutely amazing quarter full of great classes, but really took a toll on me. My final design critique went well, although I got critiqued to the core. Though it was a bit brutal, it was great feedback and am just ready to do that much better next quarter. The next day after the quarter ended, I along with the other assistants, had to go to school to sort all the work from the quarter for the president to flip through and decide what will be put up on the wall. After we finished, he took us out to an amazing lunch at this place that knows how to cook good souther style food. I had country fried steak with mac and cheese, okra and fried green tomatoes. AMAZING! Below is a pic of us all there packin the food in. 

Then that night I met up with Dad and my Uncle Alan to go to an intense NHL game. We saw the Detroit Red Wings whoop some Thrasher ass, although I was pretty impressed with the Thrashers attempt to win. We tried some fantastic beer, so all in all, it was a great start to the break to tie one on with the fam over a great game.

This Saturday, my friends Shaun and Erin and I will be joining Jessica to go to her home in Louisiana for a few days. It will be a nice break from the city and the 10-hour drive should be pretty exciting too.

I plan to have some more stuff coming up soon. Sorry I have been kind of slack on blog entries, but this next quarter should be a little lighter than the past. And I will be moving on to the 3rd quarter. 25% COMPLETE!!!

Advertise this...

So last night I had my first critique for advertising. Last quarter I just had one design critique, so starting now in my second quarter, I have one critique for my advertising projects and then another critique for my design pieces. The critique went really well. I pitched 3 campaigns. One for VSA arts, a non-profit organization for the purpose to educate those with disabilities in the arts. We did a series of 3-ads, a viral video concept and a guerrilla campaign. The concept behind the ads was to portray signs in the world of art with the disability symbols, to show people that even those with disabilities can have active careers in the arts. The second campaign was a business-to-business campaign advertising the idea of Bringing Starbucks to Your Office. They offer a service where different Starbucks coffee can be delivered to the office to brew in your coffee pot, or you can have an actual Starbucks brewer set up in the office. The concept behind this campaign was getting Starbucks involved in the everyday workflow. It was my panel's favorite campaign I did not to mention, which I felt was my weakest. The last campaign was a Viagra campaign. We wanted to get away from the "pussyesque" theme of most Viagra advertising which is the guy sitting on the beach rubbing his wife's back, or salsa dancing, or something like that. No wonder he can't get it up. Too much estrogen flowing in his system. So we wanted to get it back to the basics. The tagline being "Get the job done." The idea was that men work hard all day and need to get the job done then and in the bedroom. We wanted to get away from the uncomfort men feel for the need of this product and laugh with them and make them feel more comfortable that Ed has attacked them and Viagra has the solution for getting the job done. Over all it was a lot of fun doing these campaigns this quarter. I will be excited to see what happens next quarter with my classes and definitely more to come following my design critique, which I have way more stuff to explain.

Cheers

Competing in Design

Hey guys. Its been a little while but I have just been hella busy with school. Quarter is about to come to a close in 2 weeks, as I am now preparing to get all my pieces sharpened and printed to take to critique. I have 2-20 minute critiques this time. One is my advertising critique, which will be probably Tuesday night, and then my design critique on Thursday night. We'll see if this year's critique will go half as good as last quarters.

I also wanted to update you on a recent competition that some of my work went into. We designed 2 magazine spreads (4 pages) based on a certain subject guideline given by the hosts of the competion (SPD, Society of Publication Designers). I chose to do mine on Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is a part of New York that is total hipster. Graffiti covering each wall and the place where young people making the move to the city may find their first home. Even though the part of town is now changing for the worse due to money, and things getting to expensive, I still wanted to design the pieces based on what WillyB was originally known as. We sent out the finished pieces this past Monday to SPD, which is in New York City. They began judging on Tuesday at noon and we will find out results Friday, March 13. So the prizes are really what perked me up to the competition. They have 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and then 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Honorable Mention. First place wins $2500, the Adobe Creative Suite, which is the software I design on, and work gets published in the SPD annual at the end of the year.

Now the biggest part of this is that the first 4 winners (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 1st Honorable Mention) receive fully paid(living expenses covered) summer internship with a major magazine in New York City this summer. Now, those of you who know me well enough know that this is right up my alley. I worked my ass off for these pieces and spent many weeks on it. I hope to be chosen and feel really good about my work. However, if I don't, I will keep my head up and keep on working as hard as I have been. In time I know that doors will open where they need to and I will be packed and ready for those opportunities. I will keep you guys posted on any news I hear. 

I will now enjoy the rest of the weekend outside, since the weather is gorgeous.