My prediction was correct...

Yep, got out of class at 6:00 Pm. That is a straight 12 hour class. Thats rough but I guess we all do what we do and make sacrifices to make it somewhere in this world and follow our dreams. I have much more homework to get caught up on today and get prepared for my trip with my class to Nashville on Friday. We will be visiting Hatch Show and it should be a good time. More to come with some video...

Its frickin' early...

Well I am sitting in class at 6:46 am feeling like a zombie with coffee on my breath. Coffee is basically the only substance I feel that keeps my blood flowing so I can stay conscious at this time of the morning. I'm watching Hank fish through emails so he can send us a little bit more reading material, and the rest of the class with glazed eyes. I am looking forward to sleeping in a little bit tomorrow morning, but am starting to realize that there is so much more to do with your time than sleep, although I enjoy it so much. Not too much going on this weekend. Mostly homework. I have to take some pictures, do some more logo sketches, read more of my trilogy, and hopefully hang out with the girl some too. We are also planning our trip next week to Nashville, which we are going as the Publications Design class (what class I am sitting in currently) and going to visit Hatch Show Print, which is an amazing company that does music based print work. I believe its affiliated with the Country Music Hall of Fame, which is pretty cool too. Anyways, more to update after that. I plan to take the vid cam to document the trip, so be looking out for that as well. 

I also wanted to explain to all that receives the email updates of the blog, you should also visit the actual blog site too. It isn't just general emails, it all links up to my blog @ ewddesign.blogspot.com. You can see some more stuff on there, like links to fellow blogs which are also good to read, pictures, and just more stuff like that, so check it out. Anyways, I guess Hank may be getting back to explaining what our work is so I should stop typing this up. I hope everyone had a good night sleep of at least 8 hours, because I definitely DIDN'T!!!

Back in the ATL

Hey guys. Holidays came and went and its time to get back to work. We officially start 1st quarter today. Here is my schedule of how my weeks is going to go for the next 3 months:

Advertising Concepting 1 : Monday 6-10pm

Intro to Photography : Tuesday 8am-12pm

Intro to Design : Tuesday 6-10pm

Digital Concept and Design : Wednesday 6-10pm

Publication Design : Friday 6am - who knows

The last class I have on Fridays does indeed start at 6am and has been known to last ten hours at a time. It is taught by the president of the school and there is a small group of us. Should be an interesting experience to say the least but a really good experience. On Thursday's we will continue having our Seminars, which is when a random speaker which is usually a person from the industry who comes to speak to the school about their agency or firm. This gives us a good opportunity to rub shoulders with some really incredible people that could lead to job opportunities or internships.

Also during the break, I met one-on-one with the president of my school to discuss future opportunities and he asked me to become a student assistant, which is basically 1 of 6 chosen students to work along side of the president assisting with various tasks. This is quite an incredible opportunity as well, due the fact that there are 250-300 students and they only choose 6 for these positions. I will remain in this position until I graduate. Very very excited about this and we will see where it leads for the future.

We closed out the quarter with critiques, which is as I explained when we have a 15 minutes to present our deliverables and the remaining 5 minutes the panelists take to critique us. This is what everything amounts to because it leads to graduating with great work that has been run through fingers of current industry workers. We are graded by 3-4 panelists out of a 10 point scale. My average for the critique was 9.4, and had some very very encouraging comments that just continues to push me further into what I know I was made for. 

Last thing, I am having to sell my car for financial reasons, so I will be living carless which shouldn't be too big of a deal. I have good friends around and my girlfriend lives on the next street. Yea, that's right, girlfriend. You will have to just wait on more details on that, but it is really good and she is very supportive and encouraging during stressful school days. Now I just have to stress over getting these car payments off my back and focus on finishing up and getting to New York City in less than 2 years.

More to come as I am sure some really exciting things will be happening. Take care and thanks for the support! 

It's Over!!!

It is finally complete. I am talking about the first quarter. I finished up on Monday December 8th after my fabulous 20 minute critique. I basically had to take all my deliverables and present it to a panel of 4 people. Usually my panel will be people I don't know, but this time only had 2 people I had never met along with 2 of my instructors. One of them being the instructor of my hardest class. Long story short, I presented my work as the last person of the night. Right on the 15 minute mark, I allowed them 5 minutes to let me know I had by far the best work of the night, immaculate presentation skills, and one of the panelists was surprised by me being a 1st quarter and could tell I had been designing for a while. With all that being said, I walked out of the critique a free man and on top of the world. We won't receive critique scores until the end of the break. It keeps us on our toes but I also think that it will be nice to have a few weeks from not thinking about school. The night after critiques were over, I reserved the upper room of the Taco Mac at Lindberg Marta station. Most of the 1st quarters came and we all got to celebrate the completion together.

So now being the break, me and some friends have been tearing up the city. We rode the Marta and explored the downtown area, hitting Centennial Olympic Park and some other spots. After that we rode over to little 5 points which is just an incredible part of town. Its basically a little strip of vintage clothes shops, different cultured bars and some music venues. Even further down the road you will run into the Viriginia Highlands, which is my favorite part of town. I describe it as the Greenwich Village of Atlanta. Even further down is the East Village which also has some great bars and music venues. All in all I have been pretty busy.

This upcoming week I will be enjoying some alone time around my apartment and getting ready for my trip down to Greenville. I will be going Friday to visit some friends and hit up a Christmas party and then heading to Augusta on Saturday. I will be there for a little over a week enjoying the holidays then heading back to the Atl to spend the New Years with al of my returning friends for school. We have to register for classes on January 2nd and then we will getting into the 2nd quarter starting the 5th. So lots of exciting stuff on the horizon but for now I will be around getting enough sleep. 

Studio week to critique, and then to the sack!

Hey guys, quick update. I am in studio week currently, or as I refer to it, HELL WEEK. Basically we are in the stage of perfecting and completing all our projects (deliverables) for the quarter. We are completely done with classes and we have the entire week to work on our own, which isn't much time at all. Hopefully I can fit some sleep in there somewhere. Next week is critique week, which we take all our finished deliverables, dress up in our sunday's finest, and do a 20 minute presentation in front of a panel of 3 to 4 people. They could be some of our instructors from the quarter or people we have never met. We take 15 minutes to explain our 11 deliverables from this quarter then they have the remaining 5 to rip everything up in front of our eyes. Its a tough life but it will only make us better, have thicker skin, and be toting out some kick-ass work when we graduate in two years. Anyways, had a quick minute to write. I hope all is well with everyone and I will be soooooo very excited a week from tonight because I will be a free man for about 3 weeks. The journey is far from over however, but I am loving it. 

Going to the chapel, and I am NOT getting married

Hey, early weekend update. I will be headed to the Aug (Augusta) after class on Friday to go to my step-sister's wedding on Saturday. I haven't gotten to see the fam the entire time I have been in Atlanta so I will be excited for the reunion, as well as seeing Ashley get married off and start her own journey. Also, I will be bringing a friend of mine home with me. Her name is Jessica and she will be getting the chance to meet some of my family. I am excited about the weekend. Get out of the city for a couple days, but I will return to the A-T-L saturday night to get caught back up on homework. 

Also, my cut paper poster is COMPLETE! I stuck the text on earlier this week, put the plexi glass over it all and framed that sucker up. Its a bit surreal but it's nice to see my first complete deliverable of the quarter. By deliverable, I mean finished piece that I will take with me into critique at the end of the quarter. 

Hope all is well and more to come!

Seeing the light...

I am starting to see the light at the end of the 1st quarter tunnel. Feeling like I have been here for about a year, these past 5 weeks have been a whirlwind of loads of homework, projects, trips to kinkos, outings with friends and lots of coffee and energy drinks. Oh, and did I mention the extreme lack of sleep I am having to endure as well. All that being said, I am having the best time of my life. The mania of learning in the art world is indescribable and is a great outsource of creativity and emotion. I have worked on some awesome projects, and are still perfecting those. The goal is to be introduced to these projects and spend the quarter creating them, and using studio week to perfect them to make sure they are perfect for critique week. I attached a couple shots of my cut paper poster, which is basically an advertisement for an Aboriginal Penguin exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo. The trick is, there is no ink allowed by any means, it is completely created out of cutting out different shades of gray paper. Basically you become best friend with the xacto knife and you begin to master your craft. The other was based on a tracing of a picture, that went through scanning, a bit of photoshop touch up as well as illustrator work. My logo can be found in the bottom right and the text behind me is some that I wrote in using my Wacom graphics tablet. I also have the New York skyline in the background, as well in my glasses. It was definitely one of the most enjoyable projects since we did it completely in class. With my buds in flowing some Explosions in the Sky, and working in complete darkness, it was a relaxing time for innovation and filtering out some of the stress that has built itself to quite a mass from the past weeks.

We have also had some incredible seminars, which is where the school meets each Thursday mornings at 10 and have a speaker from different studios around the nation come and share with us what they do, and basically give you the idea of possibly working for them if thats where the Portfolio Center path leads you. Frog Design, an interactive design agency based in places such as San Francisco, New York, Amsterdam and Shanghai. After picking my jaw off the floor, I found that this could possibly be a job for me when I get out of here in two years. I spoke with another agency called Brew Creative based in Minneapolis, which have worked with such clients as BMW. Check their site out at www.brew-creative.com. I wrote the creative director an email of just basic interest and showing my gratitude for his presentation, also throwing my portfolio so far in there. You never know what will happen as far as jobs go, and all these agencies know we are basically incubating at this point in our life, and are going to be incredible creatives when we graduate. Alright, all I got for now. Hope everyone is well and I may see some of you soon.