Top Hops Essex Crossing

Concept rendering I did in Photoshop.

I like beer. Not like, to the level of Supreme Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but enough to be excited about a job that involves beer. No, I didn’t get to drink any, but I got to look at it and think like it.

What does that even mean?

Well, it means think like your client. Not in the sense of not knowing how to arrange type and making things pop to the point it looks like you made it in MS Paint, but rather about the business. What about them? What do they do? Why do people love them? What do they look like? What do they want to look like? Ask questions because with questions come answers and with answers come ideas.

Creativity wasn’t at full blast here as some of the implementations were taken from their other locations—to sort of, y’know, tie it all together. Color palettes, sign styles, etc.

via @Top_Hops on Instagram

What makes things fun, though, is being able to pull other people into the mix. In this project, we needed (2) hanging bottle signs, (2) chalkboards, one counter stencil and a whole lot of Photoshop work. The bottle signs and counter stencil was easy—send it to the shop. But what do we do with the chalkboards? We could ask the shop to make them, OR…

We can employ a woodworker who makes out-of-this-world things like furniture and décor from scrap wood he sources from various places. I had brought Jeff Miller, a former classmate of mine from our undergrad days and a fellow South Jerseyan, on board for a project we did for Adidas in their new office space in NYC—he built four styles of frames for us for that job, about twenty or so in total (it may have been more), and they were phenomenal. I knew he’d blow this one out of the park, too. I convinced my boss to let him do it and yup!

He did it again.

All-in-all, this job was a success and the clients were really happy with the outcome.

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Client: Top Hops Brewing Company (via drive21)

Project: Top Hops Essex Crossing Market

Fabricators: XDFOUR; Jeff Miller

Undertone @ 1 WTC

Quote with mustache layout for the Dalí room.

What do Georgia O’Keeffe, Banksy and Dalí have in common? Other than being artists, nothing. They’re all from different time periods and have vastly different styles of creating art. However, the folks at Undertone loved that about these artists and wanted to bring their flavor together in this new soup called “our new office”.

The information I got was simple: a floor plan with room labels, quotes that were to be used and the artists’ names, and ideas of what imagery was desired. Basic, but helpful. The rest was up to my team and me…my team being just the team lead and me in the beginning, then the other two guys later on during install. Over our holiday break, my team lead and I sent files back and forth—I did the research and laid everything out, he was the second set of eyes that looked over everything. Between the two of us, all of the window vinyl (less than 100 panels) was in production in two days with client approval.

Quote layout designed by me; a stencil was applied to the wall to ensure straight lines and proper alignment

As the month went by, more research, back and forth (at a minimum) and product sourcing went by. Where does one find a real bull’s skull? eBay, of course! And how about the gradient wallpaper behind it? Make the gradient, we’ll print it in our shop!

If there’s one thing I learned from this job, it’s that Annie Leibovitz does not mass print any of her photographs. How bougie.

Where do the picture frames come from that go around the images you can get? The shop! Nope, shop won’t make them in the short amount of time you have, so then what? Buy them! From an online frame store! Luckily a coworker had just bought from said e-store for another job and was happy with the outcome.

How about that pantry wall? Design the type for the quote and make a stencil!

What about the wall decals? eBay! No! MAKE THEM IN THE SHOP—production costs are lower than sourcing and purchasing each one. And that mirrored bear as homage to Jeff Koons? Make it; just needs a little DS VHB on the back, maybe some silicone.

This is probably one of the more fun jobs I got put on and the view from Undertone’s office on the 77th floor is amazing. Wouldn’t mind doing something like this again.

Notice Me, Senpai

What lengths will people go through to get a job? For me, I try a variety of things: I tell jokes in my cover letters, with a bold claim that I am full of dad jokes for any occasion; I submit pictures of me partaking in activities that relate to the company (see exhibit A to the left—me drinking a local brew down in Raleigh, NC at a wedding while sitting on a rock; it was an attempt to get someone from Quaker City Mercantile to at least respond to my submissions); and I try to kiss ass.

At any given time 8-10 years ago, I would have gotten a response. Most likely “no”, but a response nonetheless. And most of these responses were personal—in the sense that someone took the time to write out “no” in so many words and sent it off. Now I’m lucky if I get just an automated response.

Why is it so hard to get a job these days? Or even just a response. Places like URBN (parent company to Urban Outfitters, Nuuly, BHLDN, Anthropologie, Terrain and URBN Food and Beverage) has their careers webpage set up as a serve yourself spot where you search the jobs, apply, and then come back to see where you’re at in their queue. In the 8 or so jobs I’ve applied to with them, just this morning I earned another notch on my reject belt but there are two jobs on there (one I applied to in April and one in October) that seem to be stuck with the “In progress” message following it. I attended an information session last week on Temple’s main campus for URBN and the internships and FT roles they’re hiring for. I then attended an “interview” in the same place the next day. It wasn’t what I thought it would be, but it gained me a connection to the inside world of URBN.

I want to work in advertising or branding and identity. Bonus points if I land in an agency that rolls all of that into one. I’m getting a bit desperate, though. So much so, that even though I swore off working in EGD ever again, I applied to an architect’s office in the city where their job description fit like a glove with my actual experience. A laughable moment was when I announced I applied to Interior Architects to my boyfriend who, without skipping a beat, opened his eyes wide and said, “What if you get hired?”

“Well, babe, if I get hired, that means I have a job.” Duh.

The convo then went into the whole thing about me escaping EGD-land and doing my own thing, working where I know I’ll be happy. But when getting a business off the ground has taken a hiatus, you’ve been out of work for a few months and your savings is dwindling (bills don’t pause, y’all) and you’re a 30-something creative who needs medical benefits and would happily take a 401k with some steady pay, you begin to lower your standards a bit and look in places you don’t really want to be in.

So this begs the question, how does Senpai notice me? I began tailoring my resume to read the way I need it for specific jobs, create new sample PDF portfolios as additional collateral for each application, and write cover letters that sometimes make me want to barf due to the high level of ass-kissing I do just to get a response.

The cockblockers in this game are third party software/websites larger (and smaller) places use to help offset the number of applicants they get for any given position that’s posted. If your resume or cover letter don’t contain the words they’re looking for, actual human eyes will never lay on your submission. You’ll never be noticed.

I contemplated doing it the old school way for a while: dropping into studios with leave-behinds (portfolio sample, resume, business card) or using actual physical mail methods to send in my stuff… The problem is, a lot of studios and agencies are really weird with unexpected guests and because a lot of them use that third party software or app that takes the place of having to pay someone to do it using actual manhours, I feel like it would be a surefire way for my stuff to be thrown into the wastebin.

So as it stands, I’m still trudging along, trying to talk to people when I can to make connections, attending AIGA events when I’m available (and it’s free) and stalking career pages and job boards. One day, Senpai will . notice me and I’ll be the happiest 30-something creative with a 401k and steady pay.

Inclusiv NYC

Color page for the 3-D logo on the main wall.

Client: Inclusiv NYC

Project: 39 Broadway Interior EGD

Designer: drive21/Inclusiv/DBI

Fabricator: XD FOUR

Color elevation for the Designtex Henrik wallpaper for the reception accent wall.

Sometimes companies want to brighten up or update their spaces. It could be a new 3-D logo, some LED lights, maybe new wallpaper or—an extreme—a whole new floor in an office building. Luckily, the people at Inclusiv just wanted some wallcoverings and a 3-D logo. Simple, right? Right.

So what goes into something like this? It starts with the client. Either they know what they want or they don’t. In this case, the ladies at the company knew what they wanted but not how they wanted it. My job was the figure this out. I took what I knew and did the drawings. My teammate went and got a survey for the estimator and me—the estimator would use that info to price out wallpaper, vinyl, time and manpower cost and I would use it to do all the important creative stuff.

For this job, it was simple: lay out things that needed to be laid out (like the vinyl square bands for the glass distraction banding), design things that need to be designed (like the wallcovering in their Skype Room), and show where everything was going and how high (like the 3-D logos).

What they asked for: 2” x 2” white vinyl square distraction banding, each square 2” apart, on each set of glass in the office spaces; One accent wall with the Henrik wallpaper from Designtex, one 3-D logo for the main wall in the reception area, one repeated logo pattern wallcovering that was darker than the painted wall color in the Skype room and two sets of reverse-cut vinyl logos for the front doors.

Unfortunately, I left the company before the installation took place, so I have no final install photos, but I’m sure everything went up without a hitch.

Design Quickies: Thoughts That Are NSFW

Sometimes, when those co-workers won’t leave you the heck alone, you just gotta be like. “whatever, bitches.”

Have you ever just had a rotten day at work and literally curse to yourself in a string like Jason Schwartzman’s character, Albert Markovski, does in the very beginning of I <3 Huckabees? Maybe you’ve mentally given the finger to Karen after she, for the third time this week, told you all about her shih tzu’s vacation at the Tropical Dog Paradise Resort, then accused you of wasting her time when she realized you weren’t listening because you had a report due in seventeen minutes?

You’re not alone.

This isn’t to say I was like this every day at work. Just some days when people wouldn’t leave me alone, despite having the “snooze” icon next to my name on Google Hangouts, or when the phone would ring non-stop, having 3-4 calls in a row, 30 minutes a pop. Only when there were fires (and there were a LOT of fires at my last two jobs) that needed to get put out and I was the only one who could. Those times.

That moment when you finally get Microsoft Word to do that thing you need it to do for the 2:00 meeting that’s in…well, it actually started five minutes ago.

As one of my daily design quickies, I decided to take these frustrations (and honestly, they can even be used during moments of triumph—if you’re that type of person) and my newfound skill of using Adobe Illustrator to recreate neon to make a short series of things that cross people’s minds that aren’t safe for work.

Although the concept is simple (layering colors, stroke weights and filters), it gets tedious (layering colors, stroke weights and filters) to “design” neon. I had to learn this in order to properly do drawings for projects that involved neon so the client would have a better idea of what the final product would look like.

The backgrounds I used in these pieces were images I had taken myself. I was inspired by neon on brick walls—the dingier the better. Gave it character. Although my walls aren’t dingy (I only had an hour and a half or so to do these), I tried to make them dark enough to have an ominous feel while light enough so you can have an idea of what the surface is.

So the next time you want to cuss someone out for being themselves, before you type a “fuck-you-esque” message to someone in an email out of anger and accidentally send it—just use your skills to let it out in a creative way.

Sit down, Karen—I don’t care about your dog’s trip to the Tropical Dog Paradise Resort.