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Today was my birthday! I am now 24 years old. Students did not have class today because our teacher had to leave since his daughter was having a baby in Rapid City, SD. I spent the majority of the day just relaxing at home since it was a Thursday and everyone works. My husband will be coming home from work soon and then we will go out to eat sushi! I feel like as you get older, your birthdays don’t seem as important or as big of a deal as when you are a kid. After you turn 21, there really aren’t any more big ones until you are way older.

I changed my designs for the vehicle wrap. At first, I was going to have a hand applying a wrap to the box truck, but I decided against it because it did not translate the best onto the truck. Instead, I am working on a hand with a paintbrush painting on the side. I used a brush texture background to make it seem like the paintbrush was painting the side of the truck’s design. For the other design, it just has to match Panther’s van design. I enjoyed recreating the design and appreciating all the elements that have gone into the design.

Today is the last day of class before Christmas break! I just have to finish working on my website and then I will be done! To be honest, I really struggle with coding. Somehow I can never make it turn out how I want. It is hard because it is like a completely different language. Somehow it will hopefully turn out.

Anyways, during break I will be working at the pharmacy more and continuing to work at Panther. I have to make up the money from buying all our Christmas presents (kind of joking). Christmas is my favorite time of year and I have a lot of planning to do. I have to work on Christmas cards and get those out ASAP. I am also helping to plan a Christmas family reunion which is fun! I hope you all have a Happy Holidays!

This whole semester, we have been working on creating our own magazine. We finally finished it yesterday! It is so weird to look back at the work we did at the beginning of the year and see how far we have come. I probably would have redone some of my advertisements to be honest. It feels good to finally have it done. I am excited to see it printed out next semester! I can’t wait to show my family and friends what I have learned throughout school. I also can’t wait for the portfolio show in the spring!

Now that I have finished the Panther company Christmas card, I am on to my next project! I will be working on a design for Panther’s box truck vehicle wrap. They have a van with a vehicle wrap already and want to show off their vehicle wrap business with the box truck. We worked on vehicle wraps last year in class, which was fun. The director told me to make two designs: one matching the van and one with total artistic freedom. That is a little scary! At first, I did not have an idea for what to do, but slowly it is coming along. I have been working in Photoshop to adjust colors and mask photos. The photos are of someone putting a wrap on the vehicle. I like the use of texture in the photos, but I am scared of how good the quality will be since it is such a large format.

In the beginning of the year, I wrote A LOT about wedding planning and how stressed I was. Luckily for me that is all over with and I have been a lot more relaxed. Even though I am working a lot more with Panther and the pharmacy, it definitely feels like things have slown down. Tucker and I feel like really nothing has changed except my name (and let me tell you that was a whole process on its own). Most of my stuff is changed, minus a few bank things here and there. We ordered Christmas cards to send out as thank-yous so we have been working on those for a little bit. Tucker is on his Christmas break now until January 13th, which is when I go back to school too. It will be nice to have a break from school. Overall, we are really happy and doing good so far!

I started working on a design for the Christmas card… but I did not like it so I scraped it. I was going to go for a close up of ornaments with intricate designs in foil hanging in a Christmas tree, but I could not make the tree branches sit the way I wanted without it looking too busy, empty, or heavy. I started looking up Christmas cards to gain inspiration. I am drawn to vintage designs in general so I started to search for vintage Christmas cards. I found some of Christmas trees and decided to go in that direction. I am doing to make the ornaments straight gold foil, along with a vintage font saying “Merry Christmas” on the front. I also am thinking of using a parchment colored paper to keep with the vintage feel. I will have to make a document with what I want the card to look like and one with the spot color for them to use in production with the foil. I hope it turns out!

I was able to meet with Panther’s Director of Operations to go over what he is wanting for the Panther Christmas Card! It was nerve-racking and exciting! He gave me a lot of freedom for the design and copy while also including required aspects such as “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”. He said the copy could be short, sweet, and generic or could be sappy (which he said he is more on the sappy side), which means the copy should definitely be sappy! He also wants foil or embossing to be incorporated into the design to show that Panther can do that and highlight their skills! I have never made a project with foil or embossing so I asked one of the graphic designers how to show that on an online document. She said to make it a very distinct color so that is what I’m gonna do! Now it is time to try to make an impressive design!

I took my cousin’s senior photos this summer and have been working on editing them for her. I was super nervous to take them because I am not a professional. Overall, the photo taking process was good and fun (kinda buggy though). The editing was the hard part and it was difficult to balance planning a wedding, school, work, and looking at the photos. The Photoshop class from last year really came in handy as I had to smooth out acne, brighten teeth and eyes, and remove fly-away hairs. I also removed some cars, poles, etc. from the backgrounds. I hope she likes them!

Working at an actual internship makes me want to do my best. I want to leave a good impression and show that I can succeed in this industry. I have to be the best I can. I left pharmacy school to pursue design as my career.

I got an email back from my supervisor saying “The poster looks good, thanks!” To me, that means the poster was good, not great. I was a little disappointed to read that. It is okay though, it will push me to be better and improve my work. This was my first project so I will definitely work to improve and show my worth!