I am still around, believe it or not…surviving the critique, one fried computer, a terrible interview, sickness, and the holidays – which include Pig’s birthday, Thanksgiving, my birthday, Hannakuh (step-father), Christmas (my mother and myself) and Novy God (Pig – the Russian New Year, which is like their Christmas). Old Christmas on the 7th and Old New Year on the 13th are still left to go, and yes graduation is looming on the 19th.
Again, I won’t be posting too much…in fact, I’ll probably be shutting this blog down soon. It’s been hinted that it’s too negative and might turn of potential employers doing their research. I just wanted it to be an honest look at my journey through the past 2 years…but alas. So, I’ll keep this alive until that journey has come to an end, and then go deep into anonymity and chart my new journeys.
Meanwhile, welcome 2009. May you be a positive 365 day adventure…
The sun will be coming up soon. Seems like that was happening just a few hours ago when I left for work. But I’ve long since returned, and have been spending my hours making a chicken fall from the sky. Seriously. Maybe someday I’ll show you.
So I thought I’d be disciplined tonight and go to bed early with the Pig. So, at 1:30, I was in, played on the laptop til 2, then lights off….then my mind raced, so it was Sonata time. Of course, I have such a wimpy prescription for it, it doesn’t do a thing, so second Sonata and here I am, 3:30, wondering if I should just get up an do some work.
I had an 8 am class this morning, a 3hour group meetings, and bookmaking til 10pm, so I should be a little tired. However, before my 3pm group meeting, I stopped by my personalized Starbucks and was prescribed something for the evening. Not sure what it was (some sort of Americano?), but its strength seems to be much more enduring. Starbucks defeats Sonata hands down.
Come on brain, go to sleep! you know you’re going to be dead tomorrow morning, take advantage of this time I’m giving you!
I probably won’t be writing much in the next couple of months…I had to do an hourly breakdown of what it will take to finish my grad projects and keep up with my classes – 860 hours…in 61 days. I get 10 hours a day to eat, sleep, and socialize. Hopefully I overstimated, but so far things are taking me longer. Right now, venting will make me sad, so I just have to keep moving forward.
Alas, PC is always a crazy place…here’s a sample of what you can get in your email on any given day. I was acutally sitting in a classroom for a group meeting when this was sent out. I guess email is replacing fire alarms, and PC is replacing Craigslist for finding homes for cats and other lost items…
Well, it’s grad quarter which will eventually dissolve into job huntin’ quarter. I surf the seas a little bit now to see what’s out there, so I can either freak out more or see how I need to prepare (kinda the same thing). I came across this jewell on good ol’ Craigslist, and found solace that no matter how bad the job market is, there’s always something worse out there than unemployment….I didn’t even know Publisher still existed!
I was sad to hear today of a fire that gutted Havana Restaurant (Buford Highway near North Druid Hills), one of the few great places for Cuban food north of Miami. I’ve been going there about 10 years now, as it was often a mandatory escape from the horrible cafeteria food at Oglethorpe. Yes, my first Cuban coffee experience was here, and I remember buzzing for the next two days afterward. Many guanabana shakes were enjoyed here, though I often took them to go as the place truly was a hole in the wall. I remember when the owner’s husband died, and now this…well, there’s a site started to encourage her to reopen…so if you were a fan, drop a line and let her know! And who knows, maybe she’ll get a nicer place…and if not, that’s ok, it kinda added to the ambiance.
Yeah, sorry for that last joykill post. I’m sick. I was a couple weeks ago too, but got over it pretty quickly. Seems that I really didn’t and it came back this weekend with a bite. So, I feel pretty crappy, but at least there’s some reasoning behind it now. Yay.
And now to get up for my 7:30 am grad evulation with Hank, which keeps getting pushed off and pushed off…so hopefully someone will be there tomorrow and get this over with, otherwise I might retaliate and sneeze on him.
Well, it hasn’t fully kicked in yet, as my evaluation with Hank keeps getting postponed. I’m anxious to see what comes of it, as this quarter PC is doing it a little bit different with grads and having them take 2 additional classes at the same time. So will I be redoing 30 projects in addition to a classload that could be on the heavy side? I am taking Publications which will have its share of work, and a class called Virtuality, which I haven’t had yet. I’m also auditing Bookmaking, and judging from the 1st class can say I wish I had this 8 quarters ago! Maybe I wouldn’t hate publications so much if I had actually known how to keep my pages together.
I also have had zero energy lately, and have been wanting to go to sleep when the sun comes out. Quite a shame, as it’s been so nice out, but my body just becomes sloth like regardless if I’m up with the moon or I go to bed at normal people hours. I guess this is typical of the first week back, when I have down time after running around during break and recovering from the previous quarter. It’s almost like some sort of PTSD that rears its head when things finally calm down. All those things I said I’d work on during break got pushed to now, and aren’t making much progress (make a personal website, relearn flash, etc.).
Anyway, I won’t spend too much time on that, soon enough I’ll have real reasons for fatigue! Let’s get on with it, I suppose…I had “senioritis” quite bad last quarter, so I’ll try to get the momentum back to finish things up and moooove on….
Five people. Five busy jobs. Five relationships – spouses, significant others, pets. Five schedules of demanding classes. Five homes spread across metro Atlanta.
One group presentation.
At Portfolio Center, crazy situations like this happen. Five people without a single common minute in the day are to come together and work on a group project and deliver a professional presentation before a professional panel.
However, we had one extra variable. Alas, we had one group member with a very pregnant wife and a half finished house full of contractors. In the final days before our presentation we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us, but struggled with our different schedules and locales. We could have given our very busy member an absentee pass considering the circumstances, but our loyal member wanted to remain involved in between doctors appointments and housing dilemmas.
So what do you do with a member who has a wife days from giving birth and a house full of construction workers? Easy. Move in with him.
Yes, we moved in, pets and all. Those who lived furthest away showered, slept, and borrowed pre-pregnancy clothes and shoes from our host. A pull-out sofa and picnic table outback provided a place when fatigue overcame us. Take-out, Pirate’s Booty, and Starbucks became our regular diet. And somehow amongst barking dogs, sweaty construction workers, and a very pregnant wife, a marketing plan was born.
As for all this started -this quarter 10 students were given the opportunity to take a class called Marketing for Designers. For many in the creative field, the idea of taking a marketing class sends shivers, but fortunately we were given freedom to make the best of it.
Our class was divided into two groups and given the task to present a marketing plan for a new fictitious Proctor & Gamble product. In 45 minutes we were to pitch a new Crest product for cleaning teeth on the go: a small capsule that dissolves in the mouth, all natural, small pellet size. We could change the name (it was introduced to us a Crest-On-The-Go) and market it any way we saw fit, as long as we had a strong objective with strategies and tactics to back it up.
In our research, we looked into the way the day is used, divided and spent and the opportunities P&G was missing. We analyzed the typical shelf space for Crest and studied their color pallets and packaging. We attempted to create a sub brand for Crest, kind of a Mini Cooper for BMW, in an attempt to appeal to Generation Y. We called our product Re*fresh and added a new logo instead of using that of the dated Crest. We didn’t want to get away from the reputation of Crest, yet we wanted a fresh look to attract the huge dispensable income of the upcoming ginormous group of consumers, Generation Y.
We struggled much in the beginning, as establishing a unified objective and strategies among us provided to be quite difficult. We bribed my boss from Kimberly-Clark – senior designer for the Innovation Design departments, and also an industrial designer to shed some light on how to successfully market a new product with a creative mind. Over lunch they shared an immeasurable amount of advice and inspired us to get on the ball.
Through challenging one another, doing immeasurable amounts of research, and spending too much time in a small space together, we made out plan come together in the end. We managed to conduct video interviews with our target market, fit in a photo shoot for our ad campaign, and create three forms of packaging mock-ups. We each used our strengths to make our presentations come alive, weather it be in public speaking, making keynote charts, or comping last minute designs.
Our instructor, posing as the CMO of P&G, wanted a surprise at our presentation and did not want to see any of our work throughout the quarter…we hope we gave him something to enjoy, as we definitely gave ourselves something to remember.
The expecting
Lunch with the fine folks from Kimberly-Clark
Confidential Dog
Testing the competition
Re*fresh logo
Poster #1
Poster #2
Poster #3
Billboard #1
Billboard #2
Bebo Site
YouTube Contest Ad
YouTube Contest Page
Ad for business class (future Gen Y)
Shelf mock-up
Packaging concept sketches (sorry, I don’t have pics of the final comps)
World reknown dentist, Dr. Yuri Zhopov
Gen Y tells all!
A few minutes with a corporate bigshot and his thoughts on dental care
So, to recap from a few posts ago, I spent my previous break travelling from Switzerland to the southern tip of Italy to meet my long-lost relatives… some who immigrated to the US long ago and then returned to Italy, others are relatives who stayed behind.
I never had a chance to go through my photographs – it’s just now during my current break that I finally got them off Pig’s laptop. Anyway, thought I’d share a few moments from that incredible experience. These are from the second portion of my trip, spent in San’Agata di Esaro in Calabria, a small mountaintop village of about 2,000. Walks at 6am revealed the town in quiet beauty, tho many people were out and about enjoying the morning temperatures at that time.
