San Diegans in NYC

It's interesting how a lot of my fellow San Diegans from school are coming out to New York City. We're all making a name for ourselves in this city where I first experienced my first snowfall in February of 2009.



The first one that I knew was Art. He's an all around great guy. He first came out here as part of the Most Promising Minority Students (MPMS) - Class of 2008. From there, he garnered a job with Interpublic Group (IPG) for a two year program which was essentially a job where he spent six months at four different agencies.

Brad, Creta, and I were part of the next class of MPMS. Brad was talented enough to enter into the same program as Art and is currently at DraftFCB for another month or so. Creta has decided to stay in San Diego while saving up for the move out to NYC that I think she is planning to do next year. Me? You can see my history by just scrolling through this blog.

While interning at BBDO, I heard about a competition they were hosting for the fall internship program and passed it on to many of my friends. Surprise surprise! My buddy, Lazar won out over thirty applicants. We had graduated together, and he interned with me from January through June at VitroRobertson. He's currently wrapping up his internship, which got extended until January of the coming year.

As 2010 (do we pronounce that two-thousand-ten or twenty-ten?) approaches, a new class of Most Promising Minority Students has been chosen. Three of my past classmates were selected to participate this year. Unfortunately, I am only familiar with two of them, Jenny T. and Mike (who incidentally also followed in Lazar and my footsteps and interned at VitroRobertson). The third was a girl named Avishag - whom I cannot recall if I've met. They're coming out in February for a visit, but hopefully a couple of them will end up moving out here to join us.

Who knows how many other AiCASD alumni will migrate out to the big city? It's quite a difference to experience seasons and snow and all which is almost the complete opposite of San Diego, but who doesn't love a little adventure?

It's Out! (In Canada)

A bit more good news for my friend, Brad, and me this past month. Our copies of the Applied Arts annual student awards winners came out and arrived at our homes. The magazine can't be found on newsstands in the U.S. (at least as far as I can find), but it was an honor to be included as one of the winners.

My campaign that was selected was a student campaign for Sudafed that I completed while in school. It is probably one of my favorite campaigns for a variety of reasons. Pharmaceuticals are notoriously difficult, but I wanted to have one in my book. I didn't want to choose a client that would commonly be found in other student books. I've seen some great campaigns for Advil and Dramamine done by fellow students, but I hadn't yet seen a student Sudafed campaign, which was good because I didn't have anything to unconsciously measure it up against.

The campaign can be seen here on the Applied Arts website or on my portfolio website.

(Hopefully) Back From Hiatus!

Well well well... it's been a busy past month or so and there's so much to catch up on. To kick off this post, I thought that I would include a piece that I worked on in school with another aspiring art director, Creta del Llano for CHADD, an organization for Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

As you can probably imagine, you can only cold call so many times and it's probably a good idea to not post about it every time too. With regards to cold calling, I find that it's a good idea to keep track of who you're calling and when. In fact, that little notebook that I mentioned near the beginning of my blog? It's completely filled with my notes specifically relating to agencies and cold calling. While a few pages were used for interview notes (for jobs, informational, and reviews of my portfolio), a good 80% of the 70 pages are filled with agency notes. Most of the agencies got back to me and have a hiring freeze or are not looking for juniors, so I folded those pages in to retain the information, but so that I wouldn't annoy the recruiters again for another couple of months.

Some good did come from all that cold calling. I had a handful of job interviews and informational interviews which were all good to practice selling myself. Even if the job wasn't for me, it helped to put myself out there and really work at networking and honing those interview skills.

Since September, I have been freelancing for a handful of days every couple weeks with the Ad Council and doing a handful of other design work. This was through another networking opportunity - a friend's friend. Something that many of us seem to forget is that our friends' networks are excellent resources for jobs. In addition to this, I have been doing some simple design work for family members and getting the holiday gifts that I would design for them out of the way.

I've been fortunate to have been offered an amazing full-time job, which I will be starting in a couple weeks. How did I come across this opportunity? It was through professional networking, of course. Essentially, it was through networking with a creative director that I worked with at BBDO and the people that he was connected to. More on the job details later... (maybe)



On to what I have been doing outside of the job hunt spectrum:
I had to move this month, which is surprisingly difficult in New York City. Luckily, I've found a semi-permanent temporary housing situation that will do nicely until I am ready to deal with hunting again. I have also been taking trips back to California to visit family, friends, and my alma mater. As you can see in the picture above, I hit up the beaches while I was there. (I refuse to pay to go to a beach here in NYC, so I didn't go at all over the summer.) The reasoning for all of these trips is that once I start work, I certainly will not be taking half as many of these trips.

I spent a whole night making these "sushi" to complement my Halloween costume as a sushi girl. They were made primarily from socks and washcloths. Neat, right? Enjoy!