This book is… Amazing. If you haven’t taken the “internship” class here at PSU yet, this book pretty much sums up what you go through in that class. It’s spot on with all of it’s advice. I love that it talked about clients in an objective and real manner. I enjoyed reading the whole thing.

I don’t know how much new information I gleaned from it though. Having been, like many of you, through so much Graphic Design schooling we’ve all been told all of it in one form or another. I think the biggest thing that helped me understand and learn what was going on in the book was working for an actual company that upholds strong graphic design values.

I worked some more on the cover image. I decided to pursue the “Building and the Tree” concept.

I seem to have forgotten about this little thing called Tumblr. Time for an update:

10% Presentation:

Reading #9
These passages all had really good points to remember when setting up or running a studio. The biggest point I could emphasize would be finding designers that are better than you as employees. This is crucial if you want a well rounded studio. Not everyone is the be all end all of all things design. Each designer has their strengths. If you are good at code, but slopy on print design, hire a killer print designer to help fill in the gaps. Not only will the amount of work you can handle increase, but the level of design will increase as well. The goal is also not to “harvest” these designers for their skills. I have seen all to often designers get jobs and then three months later get burnt out because their employer simply wanted a single skill they had (not at Icon, but other places).

I have made some headway beyond the simple spinning shown this weekend.

I am now turning my attention toward the packaging (since the box etc arrived last Thursday). There is lots to build on the packaging. Not only cover art and copy, but making sure all the “legal” Nintendo markings are there.

I am also thinking that I will need to make more than the three “scenes” I had planned on making. It appears as though there is four screen caps used… This adds an extra challange. I am beginning to build scenes at this point as well and they are proving more complicated than I thought. At this point, as much as it pains me, I think I’m going to have to for-go building animation frames and focus on not only the naming and packaging but on the four scenes that I will need to build.

So I still have a bunch of work to do, but have passed some major milestones.

Spin! Spin! Ha ha ha!

I discovered why I got this book for so cheap.

It appears as though one signature was overprinted with another… lame.

It is interesting reading the first few chapters of “how to be..” after going through most of the steps described on my own without any sort of guidance. I find that if I had read this book before I went off on my own trying to work in the design world I would have been A more successful, and B made fewer mistakes.

When I was looking for my first design position I made lots of mistakes in presenting myself (some that I still haven’t cured). The biggest being in spell checking and dressing for the interview. Being as un-experienced as I was in the overall culture of a true design environment I vastly overdressed for the interview I had with Icon. I wore a shirt and tie with black slacks and nice shoes… White professional, I have not had to dress like that since. One of the most amazing things I have come to learn about the design environment is that 99% of the time you dress how you are comfortable.

The other thing I took away from this reading is the time old Shakespearean phrase “to thine own self be true”. If you don’t have personal integrity, not only in your work, but in life in general, your clients/ employers will reflect that. A friend of mine told me of a situation he was in where his design group was asked to put together a design proposal for a company. They were hard at work mocking everything up when they found out that they were not to be paid for the proposal and that the company just wanted the proposal to gain some money for their branch and had no intention of following through with the proposal once completed. His group then decided to drop the client.

I can see the value of this book and it’s knowledge contained (where I can read it).

Here we have our three main characters. The Hero (guy in green) the Heroine (girl in red hoodie) and her Robot (thing in blue).

The basic story is that our Hero is grabbed from his time to the future for use as a power source. He is befriended by the Heroine and her Robot and they agree to help him get back to his time.

As for deliverable’s I plan on creating a full box/game/manual art (whether or not it will be filled with relevant info will be time dependent). I may actually fill it with my brand book/ audience information. I will also be delivering a set of images or “screen grabs” that show what the game will look like.