Week 1: January 18-24 

It only made sense (in that sarcastic, ‘God-is-trying-to-test-me’, kind of way) that I would hit every single red traffic light on W 12^th and State St. on the way to my first day here. 

Regardless! I arrived on time and quickly settled into the office.  My space is a square room with three white walls and one rust-red brick wall with a huge window that makes the office feel like part of an old firehouse.  From the window you can see the intersection of State and E 3^rd St. and just beyond that is a great view of Lake Erie, framed by the Hamot medical buildings.

Overall the office is very chic with vibrant paint on the walls (my door is a bright teal) and bold posters framed and placed neatly around every corner.  The atmosphere is much more laid back than I’m accustomed to so I currently feel like the stuffy old grandma of the group even though I’m at least half of Mike’s age (oops!).

Throughout the week I dabbled in a few projects.  On my first day I evaluated two print advertisements for a new fitness center and beauty salon.  The goal was to condense the two ads, retaining the important information from both. I immediately turned to Adobe Photoshop but was stuck like a tire in mud when I realized I had no clue where to get my images (the good ol’ Fair Use law stopped working as soon as I signed on to work with an actual business).  In film production we use music/sound effects from a buy-out library… was there a print equivalent to that out there?  This question led to…

Lesson #1: Yes, just as in film, there are websites with thousands of stock photos available for purchase and use.  In fact, most often the photos you see in brochures and magazines are not taken by the company but rather purchased from stock by the ad agency or marketing dept.

Phewf!

On Wednesday I observed a storyboard for a :30 TV commercial.  A storyboard pairs together one still photo and one description for each shot in an ad. Personally, I was quite impressed with my coworker’s concept (especially considering the ad was promoting a law firm, which is typically dull content).  However, I was told the clients were not as easily sold. Here’s (most likely) why: The firm is located 10+ hours away from Erie so the storyboard had to be faxed and could not be pitched in person.  No one from Route 1a could be there to act as a buffer; no one could prep the clients beforehand or sell the story afterwards. Consequently, the lack of direct communication put them back to the drawing board. Bringing us to…

Lesson #2: Sometimes the creative must sacrifice his/her best idea to appease the client (a.k.a: “killing your darlings”).

An additional assignment we’ve started is to update a website related to the city of Erie.  Erie may not be the most economically booming town but it does have a reasonable cost-of-living rate and some irresistible local to-dos and must-sees.  My job is to determine the most effective way to communicate that on the web.  What on a webpage would retain graduating college students in the Erie area and regain recent post-grads?  We’ve got some good notions brewing so check back later some clever ideas.

During the occasional downtime in the office I keep up with the latest ad trends via The Denver Egotist or try to observe other on-going projects.  Angela and Mike M. (our graphic designer and illustrator) showed me different types of print work the company does and I’m hoping they can give me some more pointers over the next few months.

Other than that, last week flew by… I’m excited to see what’s in store for the upcoming days!

Oh, and on a side note, the first “tweet” from space occurred last Friday. Exciting?  Strange?