Final

Some final things I wanted to post.

 A master sheet of all my designs and their color variations. 

Cherry Blossom and Jacaranda Comp Sheets

Spiral Dots Comp Sheets

Dream Fountain Comp Sheets

Day 16

My life at internship was mostly sitting at this computer and working, wearing suits, and drinking cocoa. The first picture, I'm working on my own design (putting it together in a comp sheet). The second photo is a picture of me working with the daily production.

My most significant personal experience was meeting everyone at Skinit and making friends with them. Sure, designing I can do, Photoshop I can use, but meeting people and making friends is something I don't do very often or very well. Not only did I make friends though, I made contacts and a network for the future--I do plan on keeping contact with them. They're all so nice and sweet, and since they're new friends there are still so many things to get to know about them.

I really had fun at my last week of work. Here's a summary.

Summary of my week

On Monday I finished up my designs and got them on the templates.
On Tuesday I got my cell phone CAD'ed by Matt, worked on a few dailies, and submitted my skews for printing.
On Wednesday I brought my tablet to be CAD'ed (and left it overnight), explored a bit and met Jess, who works in the warehouse. I worked on a few dailies, and then I got to making skinners (photo-realistic models of the skinned devices) of my designs using actions. I got a bunch done. I went to lunch with my mentor and some coworkers that day, to an Indian cuisine restaurant.
On Thursday I met Pat at lunch and showed him a nice place outside the warehouse to eat. We got to talking and I invited him to my POL. I invited Jess too, and Scott. I was working on my skinners and compiling them into Comp Sheets that day, and I got them finished. I used InDesign to create the comp sheets, and I didn't know how to use it at all except for the basics. I learned about links and such while working with it. Also, I got my tablet back since Matt finished CAD-ing it, but I'll have to order it off the website once it's up since it was too late to print it. I got my skin samples too, and skinned my devices at home.
On Friday I skinned my laptop (I didn't have time the previous night), printed my comp sheets, and I met Sarah. I went to see her for some good samples of the daily production for my POL, and I invited her to my POL too, but it turned out she couldn't make it in the end. At 1:00, just after lunch, Brandon and three sophomores came and I gave my presentation. I felt really nervous and didn't have too much time to prepare, so I hope I did well (even though everyone tells me I did a fantastic job). Afterward I finished up some things, said goodbye to everybody, and even met some more people, like Flora and Arnold and Bill. At 4, internship was finally over, and I felt really sad--but hopefully I can come back in the summer or next year during the senior internship opportunity. I'm really going to miss everyone!

 

Shreya, Simon, and I in front of Ahsoka, the Indian cuisine place. John took the picture.

Matt testing a skin on my tablet.

A pile of my sample skins.

My skinned devices!

Some of the comp sheets.

It's Bill!

Sarah and I together. She's in sales. I seem to have a lot of friends in sales.

Arnold and I together. He's a software developer! (Also known as a programmer.) I had fun talking to him about some programming things.

 

The conference room I had my POL in. There were about ten people in the room and not enough chairs, but since a lot of people sit all day anyway, they were fine with standing. Even I stood, but I was presenting.

 

Time to say goodbye Skinit... but hopefully, not for long! So, goodbye, just for now!

Day 15

Resources—Post a series of photos that show the technological resources, natural resources, economic resources and/or human resources that are connected to your internship.

 

They have plenty of computers--I'm pretty sure everyone has one. Everyone in the art department does, and everyone in marketing, and everyone in licensing, and everyone in costumer service...

They also have a bunch of extra monitors and stuff for temps during the seasons they had the most work--mostly the holidays. Actually, I think these monitors are out of service at the moment...

 They have a lot of materials for printing too. There's about 42 sheets in this pile of skins. That's a lot of sticker paper and ink! And yes, I got my sample skins today. I'm so excited!

 

 This is a pile of packaging projects left on Michael's desk. They usually print boxes and such in bulk using an outside company. Anything they only need one or a little bit of, they use the digital printer--that is, skins and such.

  

The warehouse. It's full of boxes, tubes, packaging, and all sorts of things. It's right outside the art department at the bottom of the stairs.

 

It's Matt again. Here he is with his CADing and computer and printer. I would have taken a picture of the big printers, but they wouldn't allow that, so this is the only printer I could take a picture of. The printer can cut too.

Projects & productivity—Post a series of photos that show your projects, other projects at your internship site and how they all come together. 

The first step of the whole business model is that they have a template. I already posted how the process goes in an earlier post.

When an order comes in, there's a whole system of organization and database the computer runs. It takes the template, the asset for the design, puts it together, gives it a skew (name), and drops it into a folder with the date of the day it was ordered. The orders, known as Daily Production, are laid out properly by the art team, which is where I work. After the design is laid out, it's dropped into an approval folder to be looked over and sent out.

When it's sent out, it can go into a program called NVISION, which is what Rebecca uses to catalog things and keep track of the orders and type of devices and such. This sends out a command to the printers, I'm pretty sure.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the production area, but here is a pile of skins (my sample orders) that came out after the order was put in. The skew name is above the bar code. These are prints of my own project, which was laid out on the three archetype templates for a laptop, MP3 player, and phone, along with a few others like my personal cell phone and a Nintendo DS.

 

After the prints are made, they get packaged and sent out.

When a customer receives their shipment, they skin their device.

Here are some skinned devices. It's my Gameboy Advance SP and my sister's. We have matching skins!

Create your own series! Post a series of photos that show us something only you can think of. You are only limited by your imagination.

 I've met a lot of people during my time at Skinit. This is Jess, the warehouse guy I met yesterday. He's so nice and cool.

 This is Pat, a guy in marketing that started last week. We've seen each other around, but we finally got to introduce ourselves just today! We ate lunch together outside. It was such a nice day.

 This is Scott! He's a really funny sweet man I met on my first day, and on a few other days too. We kept running into each other in the break room. He works in marketing too. Hopefully he and Pat can get my designs launched off!

 This is Caesar--he works in the art department too. I worked with him a little bit yesterday on some Microsoft things, and he taught me a bit about skinners too.

 

Sean--which is pronounced like Shawn--works next to Caesar. He helped with the skinners too. He's been doing tailgate stuff as long as I've been at Skinit--it's a big project.

 Robert and Jose, who I met on the first day, work behind me in the corner. They're both really good designers.

 Of course, there's Rebecca the cataloger.

 And Michael Miller, the project manager.

 

And last but not least, my mentor John O'Brien.

Day 14

John T. O'Brien

Creative Director, Skinit

Kenamar Drive, Miramar

 
John cleaned up his desk yesterday, so it's much nicer looking now, and he's got a Cintique tablet out too. It's also easy to tell he's a Charger's fan. Here he's working on some skinners (photo-realistic views of skins on devices--you can see some in the left third of the photo) and checking his email. And he's always busy with contacting others and such, so he's always got his phone.

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 Highlights of my mentor interview

- Insight on how the working world goes: the answer to "Do you take your work home with you, and do you prefer it?" (Day 13)
- The advice to a beginner: "Compare yourself to the best, because that's who you're up against." (Day 10)
- The kind of advice I already follow: "Never be satisfied with your work." (Day 9)

Day 13

Post three pictures that show a process at your internship—This could be drafting & revision, how something is done at your internship, how your project was developed, etc.

I have a lot of pictures and screen shots of the process I used to make my project come to life, but I've already posted a lot of those. So I'll post the CAD-ing process instead. CAD stands for Computer Aided Design, but Skinit uses the term differently than most companies. Architects use that as the term for building computer models of houses, for instance. Skinit uses it in the sense that they call the process of scanning a device and making a template and cut path for the skin CAD-ing.

First, Matt, the CAD-ing guru, scans the device using the office copier. He scans all the necessary sides--the front and the back. He's scanning my cell phone here, because after searching the Skinit website for my cell phone's model (Samsung SGH-T329), I couldn't find it. He's CAD-ing this real quick, just for me. Plus, they're supposed to have everything! Looks like they missed one.

The images that Matt scanned at the copier are sent to his computer. There, he uses Adobe--it looks like he uses Illustrator--to create a template and cut path. The printer beside him follows the cut paths and uses a small razor or knife of some sort to cut the template into some scrap skins. He puts it on the device to see if it fits, and if it doesn't, he fixes the cut path and tries it again.

Here's a picture of the very first skin he made for my phone. It's a bit of a tight fit, and the top part doesn't extend all the way. Matt gets input from John, my mentor, about these kinds of things, and then goes back to edit the template again. My phone has tried on four or five skins today.

Here's Matt at his desk again. He's working on the template again, and there is a row of scraps and drafts of the cell phone skin in the trash. He's really trying to get it to fit perfectly!

This is the skin my phone tried on last. There are small dents in the top tab thing because Matt was trying to figure out how to get those thin indents on the face to look good. He figured it would help get the air bubbles out, but it didn't. This isn't the final draft, but he finalized it after getting the tab length right and returning the dents back into straight lines.

And that's how a skin template gets made. The printers for the real production line are much bigger and longer, but I'm not allowed to take pictures of those.

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Interview With John O'Brien Follow Up

Do you ever take your work home? How and which work?
Yes. Basically, I'm always doing email, sometimes managing Base Camp from home, and working actually doing design at home... I used to do a lot more prior, I don't have a home office set up anymore, so I do less of that, and it's more life if I need to come in on a weekend, I'll come in.

When you take your work home, would you rather be doing something else? Or do you like designing at home?
I like designing stuff at home, but I'd rather be doing something else. It's one of those things [where] I prefer working at home--generally to working at the office... because there's less distraction.

I heard you talking to some others earlier about the website... Your collaboration with others--how do you do/deal with it?
[In] Design, you're almost always always in form of collaboration. It's generally, someone's coming to you asking you to solve a creative problem--you know, make something look good. So if it's something in sales, they're coming to you asking, whether it's a packaging project or a POP [point of purchase display], or something for a trade show--trade show graphics, marketing collateral, whether it's a brochure or something like that, you're basically trying to put it together so they look good and they can make their sale. When we're collaborating with the tech department, we're basically working with them so that we're designing something for the website, so we're trying to make graphics for the website. It's my job... to make sure there's a good user interface, following the tenets of Heuristics. It's basically like common sense, tenets of design, so that someone can know where to click--they know where to go, it makes sense. So collaboration can be really fun and really kind of inspiring in a way, and other times it can be very very frustrating--especially if you're collaborating with someone you're not on the same page with, or you disagree with. It can prove sometimes very frustrating.