A Typical Day at Foraker

I wake up at 7am to my loudly beeping alarm clock, because that’s the only sound that is guaranteed to wake me. Before I leave, I grab an energy shake that my roommate steals from her job (Mix1: they’re made in Boulder, and they’re delicious), and drink it on the way to the bus (I didn’t bring my bumper-sticker-covered, beat up little Subaru). There are three different bus routes I can take; all of which involve a little walking and about a 40-minute commute. While on the bus, I typically stare out the window, lost in thought about what I’ll be doing with my life after I graduate next semester (can you say STRESS?), or chat with the bus drivers since I’m often the only passenger. By the way, I highly recommend talking to your bus driver; they all seem to have interesting life stories. For instance, one of the drivers was once a translator, lost everything in a divorce, and lived on the streets for three years before saving enough money to buy a house again.

Once I walk into the office, I drop off my stuff, start my computer, and make a beeline for the coffee in the “Tech Wing” (I’m located in the “Creative Wing”). Every morning, Gypsy greets me as I make my coffee, and I give her the obligatory scratch behind the ears. I travel back to the Creative Wing and wait for Mika (another dog here) to jump on my lap when she comes in. Then: time to crack down on work.

Lately, I’ve completed a lot of graphical work for Breastcancer.org, a client of ours that needs a lot of banners… so I design a lot of banners. Other projects include the design and front-end coding of the upcoming site for the Boulder Economic Council (a favorite project of mine since I love developing designs in XHTML and CSS), and designing layouts for two other upcoming sites: ShipYourBicycles.com and ShipYourAquatics.com. These two sites are affiliates of AllProShipping.com, which is probably the most interesting client I’ve worked with. They ship seemingly random items (other items include reptiles and remote-controlled cars… and no, I’m not kidding), but there is actually quite the market for shipping specialists in these areas, which is proven by this company’s rapid expansion.

All this design work has probably doubled the quality of my skills and the amount of Photoshop knowledge I can boast. So, especially for all of my devoted readers who want to get into Photoshop, here are:

My Three Favorite Photoshop Tools

Smart Guides (located under View > Show >Smart Guides)
This tool automatically places guides at all the edges of every object in your document and makes aligning elements a breeze.

Layer masks (located in the Layers palette as a gray box with a white circle in it)
This tool allows you to alternately hide and reveal portions of a layer.

Fancy Brushes
One of the best places to download free brushes is DeviantArt: http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/applications/psbrushes/#order=9.

Besides these projects, I’ve been occupying my time with designing a logo for the Rocky Mountain Flying Club, an organization about to be launched, where the members of the club all share an airplane and take turns flying it (cool, right?). This project has given me quite an in-depth analysis of The Logo Design Process [insert booming movie-trailer voice here]. If you’re as interested in how this works as I am, I’ve detailed the process in easy-to-comprehend steps below:

The Logo Design Process

1. Speak with the client and create a Creative Brief; list out what the company or organization does, what their goals are, what they want to portray themselves as, what symbols, colors, words, or phrases are associated with them, etc.
2. Research similar companies or organizations. Find inspiration.
3. Research other people’s creative processes.  Jacob Cass from Just Creative Design has a great article depicting his process here: http://justcreativedesign.com/2008/02/01/logo-design-process-of-top-graphic-designers.
4. Map out concepts in whatever way generates the most ideas and representations of the company or organization. You could try spider diagrams; they seem to be useful to me.
5. Sketch a million different versions and work off each design.
6. Sketch related items or objects.
7. Sketch all sorts of font-types.
8. Present the designs to someone for feedback, preferably someone with design experience.
9. Revise the best designs.
10. Present to more people for feedback.
11. Sketch out the best couple designs in detail.
12. Present to client for feedback.
13. Either revise design, or start digital interpretation of design. Adobe Illustrator is a great tool for designing logos digitally.
14. Experiment with font creations, shading, and details. Create multiple versions and keep your workflow versions.
15. Present the digital version to someone for feedback.
16. Perfect the digital design.
17. Present the digital design to the client.
18. Revise as needed, possibly use the workflow versions for tweaking.
19. Present to client again, and hope that they’re happy. If they’re not, then repeat the last two steps until they are.

Long process, right? I was a bit daunted at first, but after finishing my first digitized logo, I figured out that every step is totally worth it. Once it’s launched, my design is hopefully going to be featured in an iPhone application! How unbelievable is that? Proof that I’m not the typical errand-running intern. I do cool stuff, man.

Interspersed in this plethora of web and design work are the craziest hijinks I’ve seen in a while. One day, as I was leaving for the bus home, I stopped at the bathroom in my office building. As I walked in, I saw two women who had converted the whole thing into a salon, and one of them was getting her hair cut and dyed… in the office bathroom! They were very nice and allowed me to take a photo to “document my trip to Colorado”. So, just for your viewing pleasure, I’ve included it in this post.

Well, that’s pretty much my typical day! (With the occasional cup of coffee and walk to Subway in-between) Hopefully you now have a better idea of what YOUR life would be like as a web design intern, and tune in next month for the final installment of “Through the Intern’s Eyes”!