It saddens me that I can’t share my work as freely as I used to, but I completely understand. Yesterday I discussed blogging policies with my supervisor and he said that I shouldn’t make things live before the company it’s for does and even then I think they might not want their design stuff featured so deconstructed  here. (I’ll find a better way to anonymize the designs instead of a simple blur.) I am designing for a law firm’s stationery. I presented three versions of the businesscard, letterhead and envelope. I designed letterhead and envelope off of the business card design once I thought it worked.

My crtique: Two of the three versions had too much line action– attorneys are conservative. All versions had font sizes lower than ten, which especially for older people–my sup said “less-than-40-eyes”– it’s a pain to try to get a phone number off a business card.

I should change the font on the name and make it san serif to contrast with the serif-ed logo. Think white space and clean. Next round, I’m putting all of materials onto a tabloid sized paper so they all fit. (See sup’s diagram.) I am pleased that everyone here likes communciating with paper and pen.

My boss told me a story about how he and the team who does construction for his house had a few meetings to build trust and understanding before any paperwork was signed. He said that architects and ourselves have very similar jobs. He described the project process like a funnel (see funnel diagram), where you start by getting to know a lot about the client (the wide part of the funnel) and then with time and consideration you narrow it down by having meetings and analysis until it comes down to a very focused thing.

As an update to how I am adjusting to the 9-5 workday, I wrote down a simple time slot list, shortly describing how I am spending my time. It looks about right, spending an hour or two on a particular task before switching to another project. It feels a lot more like I am working if I can look down and see all the things I’ve worked on. It’s easy to feel like you’ve spent hours pushing around pixels and they still look the same after all that time.