CTESS Interview Thank You Note

Recently I have been interviewed for an internship. The very last thing I did was send a thank you note. Below is what I sent.

Dear Ms. Olivo,

          

      Please forward this message to Ms. L, one of the interviewers on 3/26/18 in ITHS. Thank you for taking the time to interview me. It was a great experience for me to know how job interviews play out in the real world. Going back to the internship, you should hire me because I have a fair amount of skills using Adobe software as well as Word and Powerpoint as I stated in the interview. Additionally, I would be a great in the workspace due to my organization skills and problem solving skills. Again, thank you for interviewing me and I hope to hear back from you.

                                                                                                                   Sincerely,

                                                                                                                   Jawad Rahman

Project Brochure Reflection

     The theme of this project was respect for all. Respect for all week was going on in our school so for this project we choose a topic we thought was a problem going on in the world and wrote a brochure about it. We started by drafting a layout of a brochure on paper. No real content went into this draft but we were figuring out what we would put and where we would put them. It was during this process the major framework of my brochure as developed. On the cover was going to go a cover photo with large lettering for the title. Inside on the second page would go my introduction. After my introduction was my first story which extended on to the next page. On the page next to the second page would also be my data which would extend on to the page after that and finally another story. The back panel was planned to have all my sources listed and on the third page on the back would be my solutions page. Then we planned out the content we were going to put in to those sections of our brochure. These were specific fact in specific sections of our brochure. This is where we chose a topic to write about and then researched facts for our sections. I decided to write about climate change which changed a lot of my draft. I had renamed sections so they fit in line with the approach of how I would present the material. The first story became an explanation of the greenhouse effect, the data section became the causes of climate change, and the third story was broken up into 2 sections about the impact of climate change. The last section on the back became a message to the reader about what they should do to help. The choosing of my topic and the facts I researched forced me to change a lot of the draft since the first draft didn't help me present my material in a logical fashion.
     Then we were up to the part of creating something in InDesign. We transferred the draft of our layout to InDesign and put in our content we planned. We obviously used the text tool heavily to do this. Many of us, however, had typed our content in a word document and were copying and pasting back into InDesign. We would frequently end up with overset text which was easily fixable by linking text fames but for some sections that was not possible. This is where I discovered the story editor which allowed me to see all the text in the frame and told me where the overset was. I was also able to edit my text from the story editor to make scetions that were too long fit within the space alloted. There was also the matter of creating a background. For this heavy use of the rectangle tool and the associated tools was required. Some of the text did not look good aginst the background color so the color of the text needed to be tweaked frequently. The typography was tweaked a lot for spacial issues, these issues almost always being that the text did not fit. So font size, leading, and tracking were some of the things that needed to be tweaked to conseve space. To inset images and data tables we used text wrap so the text wouldn't overlap the image and vice versa. Finally, the printing part. After we printed our brochures for the first time there was an obvious problem with folding. The spacing between the three panels was wrong and the brochure did not fold properly, some of the content was creased. So it was back to InDesign where we learned about gutter and margins/bleed. Gutter and bleed are areas the printer need to grab on to which means nothing is printed in those areas. Taking into consideration the gutter/bleed we fixed the spacing of our brochure and called it a project.

CTE EXPO Reflection

     

I'm in the middle

     Recently we've had our first CTE Expo for our VD course. A CTE Expo is an event where students interested in joining a CTE Academy meet and talk to students already in the academy to gain information about that specific academy. The objective is to help students be more informed about the academy. This is to ensure when the student makes the decision about which academy they want to join their decision is informed. This also increases the chances that students will want to join said academy. There were many things done in preparation for the expo. Last time we did a project it was making logos. What we did after was make 9 business cards with 3 specific layouts and 3 of our best logos used in every version of the layout (3 cards share the same layout but have a different logo). Those business cards were then but on a tri fold poster board along with some writing to be our presentation for the expo. These cards were meant to show what we learned throughout the first six months of VD visually. We also practiced how we would talk to the students. Things like handshakes, appearance, and what we would say to them are things we practiced. I looked back at my notes to refresh my mind about what the course it self was about and memorized specific concepts so I can mention them. I didn't want to explain my project rather the course itself and what we would do and have the board as a visual example of what we do. 

     During the actual event we did what we prepared for. We greeted the students as practiced and we mostly stayed on script to what we planned to say to the students, MOSTLY. Some of the presenters, including myslef, needed to switch to plan B. I practiced handshakes and greeting but no student would come to me. So I went searching for students and used a strategy to bring them to my board. I would tell them intersting things about the academy as well as an overview of the course and used their interest to see more to bring them to my board. How well did that go, it only worked on 2 students. Most students didn't even want to talk to me as they had already seen other presentations. I realized I wasn't a big attention grabber but others were. Others also did not give some information that I knew. So plan C was initiated. I would wait for the attention grabbers to get the attention of the students. Then after they were done giving their information I jumped in and gave additional information. This included info about career opportunities and challenges we faced. It didn't bring students to my board but I could still say that I informed students. 

     Many things went well during the expo. The content of our presentation was one thing that went well. The presenters were able to keep the students interested. They may've decided not to join our academy our any academy long before the expo but by their facial expression I knew what we were saying was still worth their time. As a matter of fact we were able to change the opinions of some of the students that already decided. The presenters themselves was another aspect that went well. The presenters were all well behaved and respected the students. The attire of all the presenters was good, everyone looked nice. The presenters were able to show that they knew what they were doing in the academy and were able to answer questions thrown at them. Not all went well and things can be improved. The layout of the expo was very packed. It made it difficult to navigate and search for students. It was also difficult for some of the students to figure out where they can find out certain info. So the next layout should be easily navigable and the students should easily be able to figure out where to get specific info. The projects we did for the expo also need improvements. We did a lot of writing for the students to read but none of them were interested in reading them. Since the students were more interested in seeing than reading we could've used the time we spent writing on things of interest the students would've enjoyed seeing. Some of the freshmen also acted poorly. Some of them were rude and insulted the presenters. They would play on their phones while we were talking to them. Next time the freshmen could be told to act better so they don't decide he expo is a free period and no rules apply.

     My overall feeling about the expo is that it was a success. The presenters were able to successfully give meaningful information about the academy and keep the interest of the students. We were able to convince some students to join our academy and we helped reinforce the decision of the students who decided to join our academy before the expo. The environment was professional just like our academy. There were a few nicks here and there but overall it was a success. 

Lab 15 Reflection

     In our 15th lab for our VD course we were yet again introduced to a new program, Adobe Indesign. Indesign is very similar to Illustrator except Indesign is used more to design magazines and posters rather than make art.
     The only new tool we used in this lab was the Convert Direction Tool, associated with the Pen tool which we also used. Other tools used were the Rectangle Tool and Text Tool This lab was more foucused on text editing. Not neccisarily changing the shape of text by creating outlines but editing fonts and sizes of bodies of text and their placemant and positioning.

     The first thing we did was a review from Illustrator. We were to create a black banana shape using 2 curve and corner points. To make the points we used the Pen tool and to curve 2 of the points we used the Convert Direction tool. The color was changed to black in the Properties bar.
     After that review we wrapped fully justified text around a rectangle. First we put some text in a text box and in the properties bar selected the fully justify option. Next we created a rectangle using the Rectngle Tool. We opened the Text Wrap panel from Window in the Menu Bar and with the rectangle selected we selected the option to wrap the text and set the offset on all sides to be 0.09 in. Then we moved our text on top of our the rectangle and

watched as the text wrapped around it.
     Our next task was to create 2 paragraphs with each having a header. We needed to use Paragraph Styles to define Headers from the Body paragraphs. We did this by opening the Paragrapgh Styles panel (Window/Styles/Paragraph Styles). Then we created a new style called Header copy and changed how we wanted the headers to look by altering some details in Basic Character Formats. The headers were selected and this style was applied. The same was done for the body paragraphs.

     The last task was to make a series of lines using '123 fido' with some slight altercations each line. The first 3 lines had ligatures turned on for them, meaning the letters were closer together/combined making them easier to read. The 123 in the first line was made lowercase and an infinity glyph was put at the end from Window/Tables and Types/Glyphs. The 123 in the second line was made to have tabular lining. This was done by checking tabular lining from Window/Types and Tables/Character/Open Type/Tabular lining. From the same panel the 123 in the third line was made to have proportional lining. The symbols in the second and third line were selected from the same glyph panel from before. The fourth line has the word 'fido' tracked out and ligature was turned off.
     These skills are important to a web designer because these skills broaden the scope of what a wed designer can design. Indesign is almost like MS Word on steriods (still a gross oversimplification) so if a web designer seeks to make media which is primarily text based they can use Indesign. Indesign has alot of flexibility with text so using Indesign to design primarily text based media can help a web designer enhance their work instead of working under the limitations of the other programs.

Project Logo Reflection

     We are currently working on our third project for our VD class. So far we have designed our logos in Adobe Illustrator and combined them into a single PDF file. We started off by sketching our logos onto paper. We did 3 drafts for 3 types of logo style; iconic, composite, and wordmark; making a total of 9 logos. Once we did our sketch we transferred the logos into Illustrator. The way that we transferred our logos required us use the skills we garnered from previous labs using Illustrator. So we used skills such as drawing lines, curving lines, and editing vector shapes and text.
     Once we were done transferring our logos we separated the logos into individual PDF files. The way we did this way copy and paste each individual logo into an Illustrator file and resized the Artboard to best match that of the logo. Each Illustrator file containg only one logo was saved as a PDF and a PDF file containg all 3 drafts of a single logo type was saved as a PDF, making a total of 12 PDF files. We were then introduced to a new program called Adobe Acrobat. In Acrobat we went to File/Combine into single PDF. Then we selected all the PDF files to be combined into a single PDF file. Once the combing was done we were done with a portion of the total work in our logo project. Stay tuned for the next part next time on Visual Design Jornal Z.

My Third WBL Workshop

     Our third WBL workshop was about working jobs as a teen. We learned about some ways teens can get injured on their job. The most common injuries came from slips, falls, burns, and cuts. We also learned that working as a teen can be stressful. One of the reasons why is that much is expected from you from your employers, managers, etc. Another reason is that teens are inexperienced and don't know how to do a lot of things required of them in the workplace. We were told to combat this we should ask questions. If we don't know how to do something it is better to ask how to do it rather than risk doing it wrong or injuring yourself doing it.

     We also learned about safety rules and rights. We learned that as teen we are not allowed to work with machinery. We learned that there are a certian amount of hours we are allowed to work and past a certian time if we're still working there must be an adult present. We also learned that if we get injured on the job it is within our right to file a claim. If we don't feel comfortable doing something at our job and our employer is not listening we can tell an adult in school. Overall this workshop taught us various aspects of working a job as a teen.

Lab 14 Reflection

     Many logos are wordmark logos. This means that the logos are only composed of text and many times these logos are a custom font. The font used to make the logo exists but it has been altered. In our 14th lab we learned how to alter text in Adobe Illustrator.
     The three tools we used in this lab were the type tool, type on a path tool, and the direct selection tool. The type tool types out letters. Similarly the type on a path tool types letters on a path, think of a path as a line that you created. The direct selection tool works like the the normal selection tool except you can use it to select individual points of an object.

     The first thing we needed to do was create a word with 30 pt san serif bold text, scaled 200% horizontally and tracked to -100 vertically. Let me get a few terms out of the way. Serif and san serif are classifications of type. Serifs are little flags or serifs at the ends of letters, such as in Times New Roman. Serif text will have these serifs while san serif will not. Tracking is spacing between all letters in a word. Tracking can be increased to space out letters or decreased to bring

them closer together. Horizontal and vertical scaling is simply increasing the size of a letter or letters along the x or y axis respectively. To set all of these specifications I first typed out the word. Next I went to the Character panel. Here I am able to change these things to fit the specifications to fit these conditions. Once they were changed I ended up with the picture above. But I also needed to create my own specifications with another word. So I made a word with 60 pt serif regualer text, scaled vertically 200% and tracked to 100. The result is the bottom picture.

      The next task was to create the word top and kern only two of the letters, and change its color to grey. Let me get some terminology out of the way again. Kerning is the spacing between individual letter. Unlike tracking, kerning foucuses on space between specific letters rather than all letters. Here you can see there is more space between the T and o than usual. The color of the text was change to grey by changing it in the properties bar. When then needed to create our own specifications again. I kerned all letters but I made sure the B and first o were more spaced out along

with the second o and m being more spaced out as well. Then I made sure the space between the 'otto' part of the word was closer together. Once that was done the fill color was changed back to black.

     After that we needed to create two 60 pt letters which we needed to convert into outlines, change the shape of one letter, turn off the fill, and have a black stroke. The way I changed the shape of a letter was first making the outline of the shape. The way I did this was go to Type in the menu bar and go to create outlines, having the letter selected while doing this. Then I used the direct selection tool to select individual anchor points on the letter itself, holding down shift to select multiple at once. Then I draged them in one direction changing the shape of the letter. Once this was done I created outlines of the

other shape, placed them in a specific way, turned off their fill, and turned on their stroke. We again needed to make our own version. I made three letters, repeated the exact same steps as before in a previous way but in a different way, and resulted with this.
     We then made a copy of the outlines and combined them into one shape. This was done using the pathfinder panel. To access this panel I went to Window/Pathfinder. Then I selected an appropraite option to combine the letters. I ended up with this:

 I again did the same thing for my version and ended up with the picture below the previous.
     It was finally time to type on a path. Using the Pen tool I made a wavy path. Then I selected the type on a path tool, a tool associated with the type tool. Then I put the cursor on my path and when the cursor looked like a normal 'I' but with a slash going through it I clicked on the pathe and started typing. The result was this:

There was unappealing spacing between a few letters which I fix by kerning them. We needed to make our own version so I made a slighlty curved path and did the same thing I did previously to type on it.
     These skills are important to a web designer because text is an important part of designing a website. Things like spacing between letters and shape of letters can mean the difference between a fine work of a website or a web page with words vomitted on to it. Your audience will be reading a lot on your site so if you know these skills you can make it easier for your audience to read your site. It overall makes your website more appealing.