Cindy Li/Design Your Future

Design professional, Cindy Li, came to Chattanooga from California, and thanks to Leslie, we got to attend two presentations about networking.

It all started in the morning at GreenSpaces, where Cindy Li was giving her first presentation. We all came early so we could help setup, but when we got there, everything was already ready. Somebody’s on the ball! Her presentation was very interesting. It was all about social networking on the internet and how it affects your ability to get hired. It was all very true. Don’t put anything on the internet you don’t want the whole world to know. Cindy Li was very funny, and she had a lot of great stories to go along with her presentation. I think personal experiences always help relate the listeners to the presenter.

After her morning presentation, she came back to campus with us, to talk in a more private setting. We got to know her a little more on a personal level, and she gave us job-seeking advice for the future. She has worked for some major companies, such as AOL, but she is now mainly a freelance Graphic Designer.

She had another presentation at night that my whole class went to. This time, it was at Create Here. She talked about networking in the second presentation as well, but afterwards, we got to mingle with some important people in the Chattanooga area. Talk about a great opportunity to make connections! Thank you Cindy Li!

Overall, it was a great learning experience, and I got to meet a lot of nice people. Thank you Cindy Li for coming to talk to us!

Allegra Printing

Allegra Printing was fantastic! It was a smaller printing company, and I like that. Even though they are smaller, they do a lot of local business, and they get a lot done. They do a lot of different printing, such as window prints and promotional printing. One thing that amazed me, with all the designs that they handle, they only have one full-time Graphic Designer.

Todd Oates was very welcoming and you can tell he was so excited to take us around. First off, we went and talked to their Graphic Designer. They only have one full time designer. That blows my mind that they could so much work done with just one person! You go girl! One of the longer stops on our tour was to see the printer. The man that runs the printer stopped and showed us how the whole thing works. He even had a handout ready for us. This was all very interesting because he opened up the printer and we could all look inside. It was a great learning opportunity.

At the end of the tour, Todd surprised us with gifts. We were all shocked. He gave us a mug, pens, markers, a 2 gb usb memory stick, and pads of paper all with Allegra’s logo printed on it. We were so appreciative of them taking us around and then they surprised with gifts! Oh man! That’s definitely a good way to ensure our business in the future.

We all had a good time touring Allegra and I hope to work with them in the future. Thank you Todd Oates!

Fin

The end of the semester is near, and our TasteBuds guide will soon be released. Our work as a class is done, the project is sent to the printers, and the press conference is Friday the 17th. I couldn’t be more excited to see it all come to life.

This has been a great opportunity given to us by Leslie, Leadership Chattanooga, and Crabtree Farms. Thank you so much for letting us do this! I know everyone learned a lot, and it will definitely help us in the future. Learning to work on a client-based project is so important for Graphic Designers. The great thing about this project is the fact that it’s not just going to go away now that the semesters over, but it will continue to live throughout Chattanooga for hopefully a long time to come. It’s a great feeling knowing that we helped the community.

So far, one of the most exciting things was when the Chattanoogan used our press release in a story about TasteBuds. That’s my group that wrote the press release, so we were all excited. We’re getting noticed! Another exciting thing happening, Tara, a member in my group, is going on the radio to talk about TasteBuds and the press conference on Friday. This project has opened us up to so many opportunities.

Although this is the end of the semester, it is definitely not the end of TasteBuds. So do your part and support your community!

Thank you to everyone involved in this major project: Leslie Jensen-Inman, Leadership Chattanooga, Crabtree Farms, and all the fellow UTC Graphic Design Students!

National Print Group

I was so excited about going to tour the National Print Group for our field trip! When we were doing our printer research, it was brought to our attention that National actually prints for the Las Vegas Strip. They have the largest POP printer in the world. So needless to say, I couldn’t wait to see it.

We had a great tour throughout the company. Time ran out at the end and we didn’t get to see everything, but they offered to let us come back. How nice of them! I really like walking through and seeing everybody working. We saw die-cuts, the POP printer, the Graphic Design department, cutting machines, folding machines, and so much more. It really was a great experience. I find myself wanting to know more about the machines and how they work.

Again, it was really nice of them to take time to show us around. It’s a great way for us to make connections with the local print groups. It’s always good to see people that are so excited about their jobs.

Thank you National Print Group!

TasteBuds…almost there!

Everybody is making the final touches on their TasteBuds assignments. This has been a wonderful opportunity for all of us to work on something to benefit the community. And it’s so great to see it all finally come together. We all worked together to create a cohesive design for the TasteBuds initiative. After a long semester, we are almost ready to release our designs! Almost!

My group designed an x-stand poster for the event, a banner for participants to sign, t-shirts, press releases, posters advertising the release, and a press kit. I am very proud of my teammates for working so hard to get this all done.

I know everyone that has been working on this project is so excited to finally see it come to life. Great job guys.

Bleed, My local printer guide!

Well, my book for Process and Materials is finished and sent out to Lulu. com. I am very excited to get it back to see how it all came out. It was a very interesting project because we all designed different pages that come together to create one book. Not only am I excited to see how my pages come out, but I want to see what everyone else came up with. There are a lot of talented people in our class, and they always come up with great designs. Yay team!

I like this idea for a project, because I will have this book forever. I’ll be able to use it in my portfolio, and someday, it will be a part of my own Graphic Design history.

TasteBuds Continued, Cont.

Well, as our semester comes closer to the end, so does our TasteBuds project. So I figured I would share our final event release to show what we’ve been working so diligently on.

On April 17^th at Crabtree Farms at 11:00 AM, your new best friend arrives in Chattanooga. The partners of Crabtree Farms, a team from the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Chattanooga program (2009 class) and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga upper-level Graphic Design students will gather together with dignitaries, friends, family and the community to unveil the first Buy Fresh Buy Local food guide, TasteBuds. The press conference will begin a celebration for the release of TasteBuds followed by Crabtree’s spring plant sale April 18^th from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM Saturday and April 19^th 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM Sunday. The celebration will end at the Chattanooga Market on April 26^th (11:00 AM to 4:00 PM).

TasteBuds’ purpose is to provide an organized list of local farms, restaurants, markets, artisans, and community gardens for the Buy Fresh Buy Local chapter. Buying from local producers serves the community in many ways. Buying local ensures the freshness of the product because the produce is not shipped across the country. This in turn lowers the footprint of the consumer making the Buy Fresh Buy Local option a great opportunity for those searching for greener alternatives in Chattanooga. Buy Fresh Buy Local is also for those who want to support their community. Buying local puts money back into the hands of the community.

“Everyone in our community stands to benefit from an increase in production and consumption of local food,” says Leadership Chattanooga 2009 class member, Tara Poole.

Professor Leslie Jensen-Inman and her Professional Practices of Graphic Design students with the help of Leadership Chattanooga, Crabtree Farms, and several local printers designed TasteBuds.

In an effort to impact the community in as many ways as possible and to spread their message of buying local, the teams used local printers and vendors. The guide itself was printed on recycled paper.

TasteBuds will be officially released on April 17, 2009 at 11:00 AM at a press conference at Crabtree Farms. The public is invited to join the partners at Crabtree Farms for the release as well as the spring plant sale that follows on April 18^th (8:00 AM to 2:00 PM) and 19^th (11:00 AM to 3:00 PM), and the Chattanooga Market on April 26^th (11:00 AM to 4:00 PM). The printed guide will come with a taste buddy to travel with the consumer. The website will be available online at www.tastebudsguide.org.

TasteBuds is expected to boost the local economy as well as teach people that a healthy and green lifestyle is available in their community.

Crabtree Farms of Chattanooga is located at 1000 East 30th St, Chattanooga, TN. For more information please contact Vanessa Mercer.

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TasteBuds Continued

My group has been working very hard to get everything done on time. We’ve been working on press releases, t-shirt designs, posters, and the press kit. It’s pretty amazing seeing everything come together. Our group hasn’t really done anything new, just revisions and updated releases.

The group that is working on the actual guide is doing a great job! Everytime we meet for class, they have done so much more work. They’ve been adapting well to all the changes to meet the client’s needs. I am very impressed by their dedication to the project and the great design work they’ve done so far.

Williams Printing Company

For the next field trip, we were off to Williams Printing Company. This printing company was huge! We had to walk through several buildings to see all their printers. Williams had a wide range of printing techniques. It’s always fun getting to see the many steps it takes to complete a project.

Bubba Williams was our tour guide. We got a very indepth tour of the company. My favorite part of the tour was seeing the die-cuts. It’s such a complicated process, but very interesting to see. We started the tour visiting the Graphic Design department. I hadn’t really considered that print companies needed designers. I think that is an awesome job opportunity that I would like to pursue. Williams Printing does all the steps to get your project finished. It’s like a one stop shop for projects. This field trip was way different than the newspaper. It was interesting see all the differences. I am still amazed at the size of all the print presses though. It was so nice of Bubba to take so much time out to show us the company. Our class really appreciated it, and we all learned a lot that day.

Thanks to Bubba Williams and everyone at Williams Printing Company!

Lulu ftw!

Our next project in Process and Materials was to create a layout, a cover, title page, and table of contents for a local printer guide. We were to incorporate our images from our image pair project in any way we feel appropriate. My words for the image pair project are quiet and loud. Our layouts were to visually fit our words.

For my layouts, I used a baby blue color to represent quiet and an intense red to show loud. My spreads definitely fit my words. For quiet, I blurred the image in the background and used the blue layer ontop of it. I gave it a muted look. For loud, I used a half-tone pattern over my image, made it bright red, and the text is bright colored and placed all over the page. I named my book “bleed”. I thought it would be appropriate because it is a printers guide, and a bleed is a printing term for something running off the page. And thats what I did. I extended the word bleed to run off the page and to follow through to the back cover. I enjoyed this project a lot. We sent our layouts to Lulu.com to be printed professionally, and I can’t wait to get mine back!