Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Holiday Card

...because I obviously haven't had enough of designing holiday cards

Friday, December 18, 2009

Astoria in the morning

Usually the train station is occupied by one or both of the NW trains during the early morning commute, but today the station was empty and for once I was able to see the view of Astoria and the ConEd plant spewing surprisingly pretty pollution into the air.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Clients from Hell

Just found this funny collection of terrible client stories. Also, a great collection of terrible istock photos, oh the life of being a designer...

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Great Typography Article

My sister just posted this article from the NY Times and it pretty much sums up my relationship with typography. I feel that having a basic knowledge of typefaces is both a blessing and a curse: it's great when you find awesome typefaces in design that are inspiring and perfect, but on the other hand it makes you upset/angry/disappointed in the entire human population when you stumble upon horrific fonts with bad leading, or acceptable fonts used in completely the wrong situation. While the issues of bad typography have been bothering me for years--ever since my first design classes in college, one memory stands out in particular. I was in the emergency room, hooked up to an IV and barely aware of my surroundings, and the one thing I remember is how annoyed I was at a horribly designed poster in Comic Sans, one of my least favorite fonts of all time. After this experience, I can totally relate to the author of this article when he states "If it’s bad for me (an amateur enthusiast who is interested in typography, but isn’t hugely knowledgeable about it), what must it be like for the purists? Dreadful, it seems." I can't even imagine...

Monday, October 26, 2009

astoria park

Mom came down to visit this weekend and we decided to go explore Astoria Park since it was so gorgeous outside. The park is so pretty and the bridges look so sculptural in contrast with the natural curves and bends in the hills. I tried taking some panoramic shots; theyre not perfect but I think they turned out pretty well for my first time and without a tripod...

Friday, October 23, 2009

Sand Painting

Creativity just posted a link to this incredible video of artist Kseniya Simonova who uses sand to create "paintings" on a lightbox. It's amazing how much control she has over such a difficult medium, considering tiny details like how much a mouth turns up and using the tips of her fingers to create texture. She puts so much emotion into these images with just the flick of her hand, and the mood is definitely emphasized through the dramatic music in the background. Her website is here.

Friday, October 16, 2009

The City at night

I've decided that I really want to get back into photography so I'm going to make an effort to carry my camera everywhere and post new photos each week.

Tonight on my way to the Bolt Bus I decided to snap a few shots in the semi-darkness outside my building. It was just starting to rain so the highlights on the road were particularly emphasized, and the cold air allowed the steam coming out of the manhole to be visible. It was the perfect time of evening to shoot these pics too, I thought it was beautiful how the intensely blue sky contrasted with the yellow lights on the building down the street.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The life of a designer

I found this hilarious video today that shows the relationship between a graphic designer and a client. The 2 animated robots argue throughout the video as the client makes annoying requests like asking the designer for ads without giving the right dimensions, asking him to use microsoft word because that's the program the logo was designed in, and wanting him to come up with some creative advice while watching tv so that it's not billable time. I definitely feel like I've had to deal with some of these situations over the past few years and it's funny to see just how many ridiculously absurd requests a client can make because of their lack of design knowledge!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

NYTimes Style Magazine

I just found an interesting article on NYTimes that shows a retrospective of all the best "T" cover designs for the Style Magazine over the last 5 years. There is definitely quite an array of images, from illustrations to photographs to surreal combinations of the two as the artists are given little direction on the pieces. It's interesting to see the degree to which they vary, considering the shape of the iconic "T" remains the same and the focus of the design. Here are a few of my favorites:



Friday, August 7, 2009

orbasquara

I found this fantastic site today promoting the album "the trouble with flying" by orba squara. The site is basically a scrolling flash documentation by Jose Cabaco and the Random Collective of a road trip across the country to follow the band's tour. Its a great collection of typography, photography, illustration, hand-drawn lettering and collage and it's really interesting to scroll through what looks like a digital accordian style book. It also definitely makes me want to go on a road trip and document my own adventure. Surprisingly it also makes me want to start writing... Here are a few screenshots:

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Seriously?

There's an interesting and controversial article up on AdAge today discussing similarities between a spot by Grasshopper and one by Ogilvy & Mather for AmEx. David Hauser from Grasshopper is arguing that Ogilvy stole the creativity of their spot, which after seeing the 2 together is ridiculous. Yes they both discuss the importance of entrepreneurs in today's economy and both have similar music but the similarities end there. Discussing the importance of entrepreneurs is hardly anything ground-breaking, over the past few years I must have seen dozens of videos saying the same thing, for a variety of different companies, and type "entrepreneur" into google and you'll find millions of hits about the importance of going out and doing something, as well as how to do it.
The Grasshopper execution is hardly original, using Flash to make the words form in blocks of text across the screen. I've seen this a dozen times in commercials for Midol, Ford trucks and everything in between. One of the responses on AdAge reminded me of TheGirlEffect.org that I saw last semester, which in essence is the same as the Grasshopper spot with the same moving blocks of text and imagery and a slightly different message...yet still is a call to action for the viewer to get up and do something to help the world! The fact that he is arguing that the music is similar is ridiculous as well, since piano music has been around forever, and is commonly used in "inspiring" messages such as this...and what a coincidence that the GirlEffect website has similar music as well!
David Hauser needs to realize that when you decide to use a popular style of execution in current advertising to talk about an extremely general topic there is bound to be some overlap, and just because an ad discusses that same GENERAL topic does not mean that its a blantant rip-off of your work.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

it's nice to see that this kind of thing bothers other people too...

I walk by this "your being set up" message every day in the subway and was really happy to see that yesterday someone corrected the spelling!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

photoshop trick

I found another tutorial on psdtuts.com and learned how to use the photoshop displacement map tool and clipping masks when placing vector images over a photograph. I switched it up a little bit from the tutorial and left the base image visible, and I think it would have been better if I had better illustrator brushes on my work computer but all in all its a pretty neat trick:

Monday, July 27, 2009

google

Here's an interesting article I found on AdAge about the dangers of Google and their "cloud computing"...my favorite quote is a response to WIRED's magazine cover asking: "'Is Google a monopoly?' -- which is sort of like asking "Are grizzly bears dangerous?" even as one is munching on your left leg."

I always knew google was important but its a bit scary to think that it has become such a powerful monopoly throughout the world...

Thursday, July 23, 2009

mesh tool

I decided to do a tutorial in illustrator on the mesh tool since I've never used it before and made this boot:


















it's so easy to use... just very time consuming if you want to get all the shading and details right. now I'll have to try and make a drawing that's more interesting than a boot...

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

graffiti

I've always been interested in graffiti, partly because it varies so drastically depending on whether or not the artist actually has talent. Most of the stuff you see seems to be young kids who just got their hands on their first spray can, randomly spraying their name on a rock wall to get their moment of fame, or just to feel like a badass defacing public property. But then every once in a while you find some great typography hidden in the mess. I saw a lot of that when I visited Spain and Italy 2 summers ago with my mom. I just found this website that has dozens of graffiti tags catalogued by letter based off of photographs of actual graffiti in Paris. It's pretty interesting to see all the different styles laid out next to each other and the site itself is fun to play on!

Monday, July 13, 2009

good printing vs bad printing

Here's a cool stop motion video I found on creativity-online by some designers at Kingston University. They use multiple camera angles to capture a group of HP printers shooting out pages of designs in patterns. Interesting use of geometric shapes and patterns...

and speaking of printing, BBH labs has created a downloadable app called the iSaw that makes a horrible chainsaw noise every time you try to print from your computer. I think its a pretty interesting idea as even I tend to print things more often than necessary. I feel that this office is a bit too quiet for loud chainsaw noises though!

Thursday, July 9, 2009

serious webcam work

While surfing Creativity-Online I found this awesome video by Masashi Kawamura + Hal Kirkland from BBH. The video is made entirely from choreographed webcam videos of people all over the world, working with grids to connect each image. I especially like the parts where the raindrops are falling through the screens and where the people are all linking arms...

Friday, June 26, 2009

sharpie!

there's an article on AdAge about Sharpie's new campaign about "uncapping creativity" and it seems like it should be interesting. they're also coming out with more sharpie pens which makes me really excited since I LOVE those pens. Anyway, they have a pretty cool site up now where people can upload all the things they've designed with sharpies. I found this AMAZING photo of a lamborghini that a guy completely covered in sharpie drawings:









absolutely insane. and apparently it only took 2 weeks! there are more pics here.

...I definitely need to step up my sharpie drawing!

Monday, June 22, 2009

fun ads and photoshop tutorials

working at merkley + partners is absolutely amazing. There's so much to do and it feels great to be producing tons of work :-) Today Pat and I spent a while researching various ads and executions styles for a project we're working on and I came across a bunch of cool work. I love the simplicity and style of these eini & co. cupcake ads:
















speaking of cupcakes, my ads for connie's bakery are going to run next month! very exciting :-)

In our research we found a bunch of cool tutorials as well and I spent tonight working on creating an apple in photoshop from scratch:













This particular tutorial came from psdtuts.com and I think it turned out pretty well...It definitely makes me want to try more tutorials and learn more of the complicated photoshop techniques.

Alright bedtime for me, more cool stuff i've been finding in the next post!

Friday, June 5, 2009

wow

life has been a little surreal lately. as of last weekend I am officially a college graduate, which is liberating and terrifying at the same time. the past week has been crazy with moving back to NY, doctors appts, having to testify in court (finally justice for my stolen wallet!) and lots of job interviews and phone conversations with some amazing headhunters...and everything's falling into place! I was offered an internship at Merkley + Partners starting this monday (very last minute!) and I'm SO excited to start. I love so much of their work and I feel that quite a bit of it has a similar style to my own so it should be a great experience. Pat Don might come with me, which would be awesome, but he wouldn't start until a week later. If he does he'll end up living with me at my parent's house which should be quite the experience :-) Anyway, i'm super excited for monday... it'll be great have some work to do so I won't sit in front of the tv all day...and maybe I'll have more to write about!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

some cool sites

Generally I find ART315 to be irrelevant and painful considering it means 3 hours of sitting on a hard wooden chair with a tiny built-in desk (and being a lefty it's always impossible to write at that angle!) listening to a long and drawn-out lecture about some incomprehensible topic. So it was definitely a bit of a relief to go to class the other day and actually talk about some interesting stuff.
We were learning about new media and he showed us this cool artist Julien Vallee who works with a lot of paper collage to create ads... it reminded me a lot of Leo Monahan, a friend of my mom who makes intense 3D collages out of layers of paper. Talk about good craft. We also looked at some of the work Joshua Davis has done. I think its pretty cool that he can create computer programs to make some awesome illustrations, and then wades through thousands of computer generated images to find the right one. I definitely wish that UD had offered more classes on flash and other programs, rather than just having little workshops here and there, of course they're just STARTING to now that I'm graduating...c'est la vie.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

new website!

I just finished completely redesigning and updating jessicagiles.com... check it out!

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

its a SNOUTBREAK!

The past few weeks have been absolutely out of control.

NYC Portfolio reviews are tomorrow so the studio has been a whirlwind of activity, everyone rushing to cut business cards, make promotional pieces, print and bind their books... somehow I finished my book last night around 12, despite the fact that the paper I ordered didn't come on time (even though they GUARANTEED I would have it in time), luckily Hillary had some extra paper laying around. So an hour of printing, and hour of cutting, and almost 2 hours of binding and making a cover I FINALLY have my book and can breathe for the first time in weeks! Now I just need my postcards to be printed, but the GCC seems to have lost my file. great.

I just can't WAIT to be back in NYC tomorrow, I have nothing planned for the afternoon so it's going to be wonderful to just sit down somewhere and work on my sketches for House Industries all day and just relax. Maybe it'll be a nice day and I can sit outside =) The review should be fun as well, seeing all the VCers who graduated already...Amy said she might be there too which would be awesome so she could see all the work I've been slaving away at!

In non-art related news, there is now a swine flu outbreak, or snoutbreak as it's hilariously being called, and the gym is closed down to become a flu clinic. You'd think it was the apocolypse: last night UD sent me a text message, phone call, 3 emails and a phone call to my parents to warn me about the 4 students who have it, and tell me that I should be washing my hands and not coughing in other peoples faces...really? Glad I learned that back in kindergarten...

Anyway, time to make some last minute adjustments to my website before tomorrow and hopefully pick up my leave-behind postcards!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

ugh

so my goal for this semester was to keep up this blog and so far its been an ultimate FAIL. I could blame it on the fact that I currently spend between 9 and 12 hours a day in studio at this point, or the fact that recruitment took over my life for the first few weeks, but really, I sit at a computer more than half of every day so I don't have any excuses.

However I HAVE started using twitter. Stacey posted this gross but cool video and I was happy to find that it's Phil Hansen whose work I've been following for a while. His website is here and it has a lot of cool, weird stuff. I particularly like the idea behind his goodbye art where he creates work that he destroys so that the only thing left is photographic documentation. He works on a huge scale a lot too...it kinda makes me want to go make a giant painting.

In other news, its absolutely gorgeous outside and finally starting to get warm which makes me very excited. I can't wait until it's warm enough to go take a nap on the green =) Spring break is in less than 2 weeks which is mildly terrifying since the semester seems to be flying by and that means I'm way closer to graduation and attempting to find a job! eek. Anyway, its back to work for me, I promise I'm going to try harder to update this thing on a regular basis...

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Manipulation

I need to blog for digital printmaking so there are going to be random things for class posted here too. The project is "Manipulation."
This project definitely reminds me of a project I had to do in Mac Lab sophomore year where we had to take a photo and make it look angelic and then demonic:










I began by looking up different types of art using manipulation. There's the optical illusion types of manipulation like this Freudian image about the subconscious and making people see one thing and actually see something else:












I've always been interested in op-art and illusions so it could be interesting to incorporate something like this into the final project. Similar to this Freudian picture, there's the artwork of M.C.Escher (who I have always been a big fan of). He is a master of manipulation, changing perspectives and transforming one image into another to create a seemingly realistic yet impossible scene:











In addition to Escher, there are tons of surrealist images out there that combine images in an interesting and almost creepy way. Here's a cool image I found on flickr:












Lastly, there's the idea of manipulation not only in the art itself but in it's presentation. Marcel DuChamp practiced manipulating his audience with many of his pieces, convincing the viewer to believe that a urinal could be art, forcing them to consider the meaning of art and change opinions on what could and should be found in art galleries.












I'm not sure what form I want my final project to take but I'm particularly interested in seeing how I can layer multiple images to change meaning and create a new image.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

site redesign

just finished the redesign of my site...check it out!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

im a slacker


so I've definitely been slacking on my blog now that my internship is over but my goal this year is to keep it up and force myself to write and post more images and inspirational stuff.

Anyway, this week has been quite slow in comparison to BBH. In the meantime I'm working on my website redesign since I'm thoroughly bored with the design of it now. Hopefully it'll be up by early next week. All I really have left is the design of the homepage. I'm making a drawing inspired by the "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" movie posters, except its going to be me stomping through nyc. I feel its funny and appropriate since, well, I'm really tall =) Matt's coming up this weekend and sorority recruitment starts next week so I need to get this drawing finished and the new site live asap because it's going to be weeks before I have some free time again!

Saturday, January 31, 2009

the end

Today I took my last train home from the city knowing that it's going to be a while before I'm back. I am thoroughly depressed that my internship at BBH is over =( I feel like we were just starting to get the hang of things and people were just starting to have extra projects we could work on!

We finally got around to taking some pics of the office and our desks:


It was such an incredible experience, and I learned so much more in just a few weeks there than I have in years of school. And I'm really happy with the Miller Lite posters that we did so I got something for my book too!

After work, Amy took us out for drinks at a cool little bar across the street and it was nice just talking to her and hearing more about her life. She's really cool so I'll definitely be keeping in touch!

Goodbye BBH...

Friday, January 23, 2009

=)

today was freaking amazing.

we spent all morning working on the posters (surprise surprise) but then around 11 one of the producers came over to us and asked if we wanted to go watch her work on a commercial, which of course we did! We took a cab over to Color, the audio post-production company that's working on the commercial, and funny story, we ran into Jake in the lobby since apparently Digital Kitchen did the graphics and he was dropping off the tape!

Color was one of the coolest places ever, a huge space with lots of pictures of dogs and random art, lots of food and drinks, and the guys who work there are totally chill. We met Jeff who showed Kat and me tons of commercials and gave us some DVDs of work...he also told us to keep in touch and let him know if we ever need anything. Kat told him giving us this freedom to call him was a bad idea haha. My favorite thing he showed us was this microsite.

We watched the guys put together the video and audio which was really interesting and the actor came in to do the voice-over. I could never do voice-overs since I wouldn't know how to say the same sentence a million times "being more assertive" and "a little less snarky"...but it was fun to watch. The agency got us sushi for lunch and we spent the rest of the afternoon watching them work on the commercial and sat in on the conference call with the client (so cool!)

Then it was back to the madness of the agency where things seem to be out of control because of the big pitch everyones working on. We ran into Amy and she told us that KEVIN RODDY (the creative director who I researched for Ann's class and makes me feel like I'm in the presence of a celebrity!) walked past our desks today and saw the posters we're working on and said they look really cool and he might be meeting with us on monday. OMG.

So basically, today was amazing. I'm so sad that I only have 1 more week at BBH. I don't want to leave =(

Thursday, January 22, 2009

longggggg day

This morning my train broke down on my commute into the city. After 20 min and deciding the problem couldn't be fixed, they piled our entire FULL train onto another completely FULL train. Everyone had to stand and it was the local, not the express. Ugh. Luckily after a few stops I was able to switch trains AGAIN and get an express. The commute only ended up being 2.5 hours instead of the usual 2. woo.

Today was more drawing and designing. It's really hard to try to make a poster look screenprinted when its on the computer. And I really wish we had more markers and pens and art supplies to work with. We spent the entire day working on one poster...I'm still not happy with it but I think we're going in the right direction. At least the one we did yesterday looks fabulous =) I do however wish we could work on another project at the same time as this.. Kat and I saw some of the work the freelancers have been working on and we could TOTALLY do that...

Talked to Pat Don tonight on the phone and it was quite possibly the highlight of my week =) Time for a quick skype now with Matt and then off to bed to make up for my lost nap on the train this morning!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

hours of illustration and a cafe concert...

Kat and I worked on the posters more today...I've never spent so long working on a single project...well at least not since high school when I spent 15+ hours a week drawing...but anyway, the posters are looking AWESOME and I can't wait til we finish them and I can put them in my book.

Another freelance creative team started today so between Kat and me, the new guys and everyone from the China office our little cluster of desks is getting quite crowded! Everyone is starting to look really tired from working on this big pitch, I can't imagine focusing on one project for weeks at a time, working all hours of weekends and nights. Advertising is ridiculous.

At 5, there was a mini concert in the cafe and Laura Izibor performed. She was totally amazing, very soulful and beautiful music. They passed out copies of her album but they were out by the time I got to the front of the crowd...hopefully someone will leave a copy up front so I can grab it.

I think tomorrow Kat and I get to work on a new project, it'll be a nice break from several days of posters =)

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

relaxing weekends are nice

Friday I took the Bolt Bus down to philly so I could spend the weekend at UD. Only $10 from NYC to Philly on a coach bus...not too shabby. Except it was late and I had to stand outside for a half hour in literally 5 degree weather...

Anywho, the weekend was pretty uneventful, spent time with Matt, had a delicious dinner at Bertuccis, watched the Eagles lose and Matt want to cry, and finally finished Kat and my Match.com ads that we started last semester. Ann wants us to enter them in the ADC competition and they look soooooo much better now than they did before:

This pic is pretty small but they're up on my website too.

Work was fun today, Kat and I spent the day working on posters for Miller Lite and they're turning out really cool. Definitely a different style than I'm used to working in but they'll be great to put in my portfolio. We watched the inauguration at noon in the lobby and it was great. wooo obama! I can't believe how many people were out there in the cold...including my housemates who were playing with UD marching band! After the inauguration it was back to work for a few more hours til we met with the rest of the creative teams working with us.

Early morning tomorrow (as usual, I can't wait til I don't have to commute 2 hours every morning...) so it's off to bed for me!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

4 inch heels and $150 of books later...

Today was FREEZING.

and of course this was the day I had to take the local train which makes like 6 more stops. and I had to wait 15 minutes. In the snow. In my 4" heels....probably should have picked out better footwear today but I'm usually sitting all day either at my desk or in the cafe so I like wearing heels when I can =)

Anyway, we got to work and the CD from BBH China was visiting for the big pitch we've been working on and he wanted Kat and me to go get some visual references for his idea. So we trekked around the city looking for some art books. Yet again, poor decision of footwear but oh well. We went to the Strand and they didn't have the specific book we needed so we just hung out looking for other books that were relevant (and warmed ourselves up a bit!) After calling several bookstores and talking to some particularly unhelpful Borders employees we FINALLY found a bookstore with the book we needed and made it back to BBH by about 3 with $150 of art books. Rob (our CD) and Johnny (China CD) were holed up with the "war room" as they called it with all the ideas from every creative team working on the brief and it was awesome. There were literally papers tacked up covering every single inch of wall space, I've never seen anything like it. It was really awesome to see how some of the other teams have been working with ideas very similar to Kat and mine, and Johnny pointed out one of our ideas for an iphone app that he particularly liked which was totally awesome =)

The rest of the afternoon we worked on some posters for Amy Servidea...she's a VC alum at BBH who basically got us the internship. As much as I've liked brainstorming for the last 2 weeks its nice to get copy and just have to design. She gave us this sweet book of old rock posters to use as reference so we spent a few hours sketching and making up some hand drawn typefaces. They're already turning out pretty cool so it'll be nice to have something to put in our books.

I'm taking the bolt bus down to philly tomorrow night so I can spend the weekend at UD and I'm pumped for that. It'll be SLIGHTLY warmer down there...tomorrow its supposed to be 4 degrees when I stand outside waiting for the train :-(...i'm definitely ready for spring!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

So Sleepy...

The 2 hour commute every morning and night is starting to get to me.

I really don't know how people in my town have been doing it every day for years. Knowing that I only have to wake up at 6am for 3 more weeks is one of the few things keeping me going. That and how completely obsessed I have become with BBH :-)

This weekend was nice to relax and work on a campaign for Match.com that Kat and I started last semester. Ann thinks we should enter it in the ADC competition and now that I completely redesigned them this weekend I actually think they might have a shot!

Today at work was the same 'ol same 'ol...lots of brainstorming and trying to come up with some visuals. I'm finally starting to think in commercials instead of just print, and while they're not necessarily brilliant ideas for commercials it's definitely starting to get a LITTLE easier to think in video.

I would write more but my brain is fried and I need to get some sleep. I feel like such an old lady coming home at 8:30 and falling asleep by 10 or 11. And I've been missing all my favorite trashy reality tv shows. Ah the life of advertising...

Thursday, January 8, 2009

commuting is exhausting

Today was the first time I commuted from home and its 2 hours from my door to BBH. ouch.

At least I LOVE working at BBH so it's definitely worth the commute and surprisingly I wasn't tired on the ride home...perhaps its the fact that having a barista at work has made me pick up my coffee drinking habit and I'm up to about 5 cups a day again!

Work today was similar to the past few days, Kat and I spent more time brainstorming and started working on visuals to present. We met with Rob the CD in the morning and he actually seemed interested in a few of our ideas which was amazing and he told us to meet with Josh and Marc, the new senior art director and copywriter tomorrow to exchange some ideas and get some new insight. I hope working with them we can start to get a better understanding of how the whole process works...ad in school is TOTALLY different than the real world. we've barely worked with partners before and I literally have no idea as to how things get from the idea stage to actually being produced, who works on what and all that. We talked to one of the art directors about it today when he came over and asked us how everything was going but there are still SO many things I have questions about.

Tomorrow will be the end of my first week...I can't believe how fast it's all going!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Halfway done with the first week!

Its 10:15 and for the first time this week I am sitting in my kitchen and I'm so excited to sleep in my OWN bed and not on someones floor in a living room. It's not going to be fun taking a 7:15 train in the morning but its totally worth it.

Yesterday Kat and I spent pretty much the entire day brainstorming ideas. It's a LOT harder than I thought it would be. At school I'll work on a project for an hour or 2, take a break, maybe take a nap and then get back to it. We worked from 9:30 til about 1 and hit a mental brick wall. I hope it gets easier with time. At least they give us the product and strategy as opposed to ad class where we have to come up with everything on our own. After lunch we tried to come up with more ideas then finally just decided to research funny commercials for inspiration.

After work, we went up to Bleeker St to see Kat's brother's band play at a bar. Unfortunately we had to trek several blocks in the pouring rain while I carried a 50 lb suitcase with a weeks worth of clothing, but the band was really great and it was a good time. We took a cab back to Kat's brother's apartment and passed out watching episodes of The Office.

Today was more brainstorming and luckily we didn't hit the mental brick wall until about 4...I guess it does start to get easier. I'm glad we have so much time to work on this campaign, I think we might actually have some good ideas. We're meeting with the Creative Director Robert Rasmussen tomorrow so I'm a little nervous but we talked to him the other day and he's totally cool. I was really surprised when I met Kevin Roddy, another Creative Director who I did my advertising research project about because he was also so down to earth and fun to talk to.

The more I work at BBH and the more people I meet, the more I love it and I can't wait to see what else is in store.

Monday, January 5, 2009

"baby got sheep" -jackie

I've never blogged before so it should be interesting to see how this goes.

Today was Kat and my first day working at
BBH and I am so exhausted. I got about 3 hours of sleep last night after laying in bed for hours freaking out, but after a few xanax and an hour-long subway ride at 7:30 in the morning I was finally standing in front of the building. Kat and I met up at dunkin to calm each other down and down some coffee to wake us up and then we were on our way. The building is right by canal street in the AT&T building and its HUGE. BBH is on the 19th floor and when you leave the elevators the walls are covered in a mural of sheep.



I probably should have used the flash but I didn't want to look like a TOTAL creeper in the lobby. Anyway, once we were inside we got the official tour and the office is HUGE. There are tons of couches and tables to sit and talk at and lots of long desks surrounded by glass offices. The conference rooms are named for the different parts of the sheep like flank and rump which I thought was pretty funny. They made us take funny photos in a photo booth so they could hang them in the lobby, and showed us the kitchen filled with snacks which we are encouraged to raid as well as the xbox with rock band...in case we need to relax!

After the tour Kat and I were kinda confused as to what we should do since everyone kept telling us that they would come back with work...and then they didn't. So we set up our voice mail and drank a lot of the free coffee...and stalked photos of everyone in the office. Everyone is really awesome and friendly. However I was totally overdressed. And kat and I both accidentally wore black and red so we looked like twins. And every time someone asked us a question we would answer at the same time. People probably think we're the same person.

After lunch we finally got an email inviting us to a meeting for a new pitch BBH is trying and we spent 3 hours with the other creative teams getting briefed and talking which was really cool. Definitely a lot more in depth than any briefs we've gotten at school. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow where they want Kat and me to spend pretty much the whole day brainstorming and coming up with ideas...its really awesome that they're asking us to do REAL ad work and not just get coffee...

Alright its time for bed so hopefully I can come up with some amazing ideas tomorrow and impress everyone =) I hope everyone else is enjoying their internships and I can't wait to hear all about them!