update from the intern

a few things i’ve learned this week:
1. finding graphics (what i said was my favorite part earlier) can be absolutely maddening. haha. so that clipart.com we subscribe to…? yeah, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. all i needed the other day was a simple ice cream cone graphic and i couldn’t find one. out of 6 million graphics, i couldn’t find ONE good one! (this might be where the perfectionist in me comes out, ha...) i had to resort to sites like flickr.com and google image, where i FINALLY found one (after working on it a bit in photoshop). but yeah, it’s a lot harder than i thought! i had trouble today finding some graphics, too. you really have to know how to search for them (which often involves a lot of creativity, i’m finding).
2. i’ve discovered lately that most of my job involves “playing.” i have to play to make the text fit, to make the pictures look right, to make the text wrap around the image so there’s some anchor text at the bottom and not too much text crowding the top and side, and that it's all evenly spaced throughout the layout. with every picture i find online, i have to take it into photoshop and change it into black and white (because it’s a black and white publication). then i usually play with the brightness and contrast and i always crop and resize it. that part's not bad, but the rest is tedious. it's not like i've never played around in InDesign before... it's just that i've never had to work with a publication that a couple thousand people will read! it's my responsibility to inform... and to make it all look good. if i make something too big, it will spill into the next column… or if it’s too small, i have too much white space. it's like a giant puzzle of text and graphics! good thing i enjoy that kind of thing. few things in life are more satisfying than making it all fit together perfectly. :)
3. taylor is everywhere! it turns out, my boss’ son went to taylor! AND not one, but TWO of my coworkers have kids who went to taylor! a-mazing. i love the connection. :)

and now some good news to report. this week was my first week doing the focus (our church newsletter) almost entirely by myself - the graphics, the text, contacting people, sending the focus out to staff for corrections (when i learned how to make a distribution list in outlook and how to make a PDF of the document - all by myself!), editing, and finally, packaging everything and sending it to the printer. my bosses (yes, i have two) were quite pleased. one of them said “blake, look at you. this is what, week 3, and you’re already running with this! think about all we can do in the next couple months! i am just thrilled.” then my other boss (the one who was in charge of the focus before i came) said, “not as thrilled as i am!!” ha. so that made me feel good. there’s nothing like a good pat on the back. i’m happy with this week’s focus,too. it’s clean and sharp. and i really love the graphics i used. (and i’m glad my bosses do, too!)

well, it's bedtime for this intern. more later.