Research the types of places you’d like to work for (design agencies, private companies, tech organizations, etc.), then come up with a list of ~15-20 places in town you’d like to work for, then check out their careers section of their websites, and then apply there anyways even if you don’t see something you’re qualified for. –Paul Nissen
Places I want to work at
A list (in no order of preference) by Katarina Countiss, recent graphic design school grad.
and I love Tether for the reason that after applying for a job their automatic responder said:
In the meantime — we know the waiting’s hard — how about revisiting Salinger’s Nine Stories or maybe The Godfather, Part II. Good stories those. Thanks!
This game inspired by Adventure Time and their reference to platformer games in a nonsensical happy irreverence. As a child, I used to make these games where you trace with your finger the track that your character goes, watching out for spikes and coins. With my renewed interest in sound, I present a new project in its infancy. I’m thinking I’ll animate all this in After Effects and then add the sound live and last using household objects that fit the visuals. A game video walkthrough! It’s gonna be fun. (After my first informal user test, I realized that the teleporter box needs to be better established.)
I was at a coding jam session at Greenlake Forza last night with Paul Nissen, Seattle Central Creative Academy code-helper (for the lack of a better title). It turns out the kids at this year’s Web Design Bootcamp are getting schooled in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). When they asked for help, I kind of shrugged, like what? Chris Sullivan mentioned it last year just once and we didn’t implement one or anything, we just ooohed and ahhhed.
Aside from some trouble with the school’s server, the kids are working their SVGs. This inspires me to implement one myself (on my snazzy portfolio site— in a trial header called headera.php, so it doesn’t show up on the other pages, but that’s another thing entirely.). Harder than it looks. Make a thing in Adobe Illustrator. Save as .svg. Put it in your images file. They are wild beasts, SVGs, scaling all over the place. Here are my attempts.
First one is the height of the nav and the text isn’t outlined in the svg, so it shows up as Times New Roman. Fascinating! The second one, I gave a height and width, but it’s huge.
In the end, it’s working because I told it where to go (negative top margin), how big it needs to be (using percentages) and outlined my text in Adobe Illustrator. And I made a back up .png for browsers that are too lazy to deal with something vector.
Here’s my code. I lifted it from this informative website. And that website delivers a lot of other ways to implement these things, if you don’t want to put some javascript in your html.
I must add my nav tags and some other good things (and notice how I don’t use a unordered list that’s weird…) so don’t judge my code too harshly.
But, yeah, I love SVGs now. They look real sweet on mobile!
This is what I wrote down in my little portable notebook.website to be redesigned
Site map for portfolio website
Today, I am getting organized for my portfolio reboot. It has been a month since I graduated graphic design school and I had only one interview with potential employers despite meeting with three recruiters. I think that having more projects on my website (I currently have nine) will be better bait and open more doors for me.
Here’s my checklist. (I think it’s important to know where to start.)
Update 7-24-13: First Page, UX
Footer is not visible on my netbook. This is a picture “above the fold.” As part of the reboot, I modified the images for the projects. The white backgrounds were making it seem as if there were holes in the website.
Today a friend’s birthday prompted a birthday image for her Facebook wall. Before going to graphic design school, before even I was on Facebook, I cherished making cards for holidays and stuff. I love that I finally have the time and the knowledge of computer programs to make some cool stuff. I am currently into hand-lettering. I used Permanent PENSTIX No. 4017-F 0.7mm on some tracing paper. Then I took a picture with my camera phone and then played with it in Photoshop, using layers, hue-saturation adjustments and brushes.
Today, I enjoyed SeaTech Connect’s Capitol Hill Office crawl. It’s a networking event happening in Seattle, first Thursdays in the summer months. Most of the offices are design companies that focus on digital/tech solutions. I heard about the event from a classmate via Facebook, but I decided to go when someone from AAF Seattle proposed (via Linkedin) to meet and travel as a group.
Two hours isn’t enough time to hit up all the cool places and really get a feel for their offices on the Hill. I ended up going to 5 out of the 9 participating offices.
It was a little intimidating (but mostly exciting) being a recent graphic design graduate chatting up design veterans on their home turf. It was an adventure in interior design with excellent networking opportunities. People kept asking me where I worked and I told them that I am currently looking for a job. So in a way, this office crawl was like window shopping for companies to work for.
Civilizationis a small office with one conference room and a open work-space. I liked the magnetized walls where they hung beautiful posters. They were excellent hosts, serving a punch flavored with rum and elderberry. They were the only one with their twitter handle readily available, which is a nice thing for these kinds of events where tweeting is encouraged.
Crown Socialis a small office with a big open space in the middle and lots of natural light. They had a row of unique looking chairs that was a nice touch.
DIGITALKITCHEN is really adorable. I was greeted by Stanley, the interactive player piano playing some Lady Gaga. Their office is glorious. Most of the workspaces had two or three monitors. I remember seeing a lot of wood: desks, floors, cabinetry, making the space seem warm and cozy.
Intentional Futures is on the fifth floor of The Greenest Commercial Building in the World — The Bullitt Center. The office was clean and new, decorated with white furniture. The windows are large and open during the summer, letting in lots of fresh air. Incredible feeling being in that space, being on the hill, the breeze, the view of the Space Needle at dusk.
SUBSTANTIAL really won me over. They had a rooftop lounge, overlooking Cal Anderson park. They had a DJ, margaritas, friendly employees that spoke well of the company and seemed engaged as to who I was. I hadn’t heard of them before this event. But, now I can’t stop thinking about that place. It was nice seeing their post-its on the wall, indicating their sense of organization and communication. I’m a big fan of Kanban, so that made a huge impression on me. And they’re hiring designers right now, so that’s a place I might get to work at. So cool.
Civilization got some social going on.Crown Social’s chair collectionSubstantial’s view of Cal Anderson ParkSubstantial’s rooftop loungeSubstantial’s Workflow VisualizationSubstantial’s rows of workstationsSubstantial’s corner lounge with a view of Pike streetIntentional Future’s work pod set-upOne of Intentional Future’s conference roomsOne of Intentional Future’s large open windowsOne of Intentional Future’s snazzy loungeIntentional Future’s windowsDigital Kitchen’s corner conference roomStanleyPianoDigital Kitchen’s work space
Today, I rendered and edited footage. The animation for this small section took about six hours. From typography to collage. And it’s going to go through some feedback and revision before it’s the final version.
This project I am working on for my graphic design portfolio is difficult at times because I am still feeling out who my audience is, I just realized. I am going to think about this some more.
The final video is going to be better resolution than this rough draft, I’ve posted. Also, I am hoping to get an audio engineer down the line to help me with the audio of the video.
Update 7-8-13: 15 more seconds
I created the second part, “discovery.” I uploaded my current state of the video to vimeo for better resolution options.
Kismet Arts Tangent 