Atlanta. Days 9-13.
Friday, Jeff took me to the Matchstick Media house to meet some of the guys there. They were all really cool, and I loved being in such a creative space. I’d love to have a design house like that someday. Later, we had lunch with Nick, the publisher of Paste Magazine at Taqueria in Decatur (best tacos I have ever had), and the rest of the day he taught me about “grass roots marketing” (aka, putting signs up around the community for a garage sale). Saturday was the sale. Sunday, I went to a church in Midtown where I met a lot of great people. They have an artists ministry that meets on Monday nights, and a homeless ministry that meets on Friday nights. I am going to go back for their house church this Wednesday night to try to get plugged in with them. Sunday afternoon, I cooked Indian burritos (don’t ask; it’s confusing to explain), watched a lot of Arrested Development (new favorite show), and then went out for ice cream with Andre and Jeff, and then went and visited their friend Michael’s family at their new “modern” home that they just built. It was one huge box. And it was incredible.
Monday, I spent the whole morning in a meeting with Jeff and Liz, a local graphic designer. They were planning a lot of stuff for the look-and-feel of a big social issue conference that will be going on in Dallas this fall to improve city education and offer affordable housing solutions to families suffering from the economic crises. Then, went to lunch downtown with Jeff (chicken Cuban sandwiches = good), and spent the rest of the day working on stuff at the house, trying to get sponsorships for the Gift Card Giver tour mostly.
So, that’s a brief rundown. It hasn’t been anything glamorous or riveting lately, just getting a lot of stuff done! Today, I’m working at MetroMerge while Jeff meets with the board of Essential 2 Life (a big non-profit). I’m getting to design an ad for the Catalyst blog (pretty legit), and will even be submitting some t-shirt designs for Catalyst later. I also still am working on concepts for the Flash invitation for the tour, and will be designing for a screen print to go on a tote bag, three 4ft x 8ft tour posters, and an HTML monthly newsletter design, all for GCG. So I’m kind of busy. As far as service/community goes, its been kind of slow. But I think that that will change soon as I get more involved with some ministries here in the city. So look for that.
Designing: I learned a lot sitting in on the creative process between Jeff and Liz, the graphic designer. We did a word cloud, so to speak, of things we want incorporated into the design. We critiqued the old designs, talked about what we wanted to see for the new ones, and then considered the constraints that the company’s design manual lists as well. I have also been getting better at InDesign, because I made a sponsorship packet in it, and have been compiling files into .pdfs with it. I’m a lot more comfortable with Illustrator now too; I definitely see the benefits of designing with it rather than with Photoshop all of the time. I’m still slowly learning Flash too. My creativity is definitely being challenged simply by the amount of work I’m having to output, but it’s also making me grow a lot by having to consider different styles than I normally work with. I also am having to order a lot of printed material, which is helping me learn to work with printers a lot better. Later this week, I will be visiting a printing press to learn even more about the process.
