A Slow Rebranding of Myself

Been sick the past couple of days so while I was stuck in bed at home, I decided to take this short period of free time to slowly start rebranding myself. As such, I created and ordered myself a business card (something that I've never done before), redesigned my resume, and I'm now in the process of redoing my website. It's taking me a lot longer than usual because I've decided to delve into the world of mobile website design. Before, my website appeared on mobile devices exactly as it does on a desktop only scaled down to fit the screen. That's not exactly the best thing to do so this morning I sat in bed watching tutorials on how to use fluid grid layouts in Adobe Dreamweaver and now I'm in the process of building a website that can be mobile enabled. Hopefully the end result is to my liking.

My redesigned resume, which can be seen here.

My website in Adobe Dreamweaver CS6.

My website in live mode (work in progress). You can see my current website here.

Print Portfolio Done?

Actually, I feel like it's still a work in progress (which it is). I gotta keep adding to it and making it better, but for now this is a temporary fix.

Current Project: A Hardcopy of My Portfolio

So I've been trying to come up with a good design for a print portfolio. Up until this point, I've just been using an album-like portfolio to put print copies of my design in. Now I figured that designing an actual portfolio would be a better investment because it'll showcase my ability to design print materials and it's more personalized to fit my style. An album is just so lifeless. So without further ado, here is my work in progress. The only concern I have at this point is if it doesn't print out correctly, so fingers crossed that won't be too big of a problem.

Missing Piece

It's been about 9 months since I've graduated and I'm still stuck in the same rut that I've always been. Not that working at Studio Movie Grill is bad (that's a terrible lie). It's just that I don't feel like I'm making any progress towards my career goal. I don't want to be stuck as a waitress forever, but that's what I have to do right now in order to have money in the bank.

To make things a little bit worse, I decided to sever my time at the internship I was at. Interning at the company I was at seemed like a waste of time because 1) I wasn't making any money, and 2) the projects were so simple that my skills seemed wasted. What do I mean by simple projects? I mean doing projects like making brochures using a company-made template, making videos using other company's content and then slapping on a logo at the end, and imitating other company's materials and slapping the company logo on that. Not only is there no challenge in that, but it's also immoral. On top of that, I was working independently and not really learning anything new from anyone.

It's just frustrating to think that I might not be good enough to do any better than I am now. I'm looking at my portfolio at this point and wondering what I'm doing wrong. Am I missing something that employers are looking for or am I just not able to compete with everyone else in this industry? I'm thinking its the latter. Maybe I'm not as good as I think I am. And this is where my self-esteem falls further because graphic design is the only thing I know, and if I'm not good enough to do that then I'm good for nothing. That's depressing.

New Portfolio!

So I finally decided to make a very important investment and purchased a legit domain. No more of the co.nr mess. I paid like $38 for a whole year of web hosting and got the domain for free at GoDaddy.com. Not too bad. Now you can Google my name and actually find my website on the first page (along with my Twitter and Facebook). It's alyssanguyen.com. Just so you know.

The whole redesigning of my portfolio took 3 days. This is what my old portfolio looked like:

Now it looks like this:

In case you're curious, my new design was inspired by the Nike Lebron X shoes in the "Canary" color. Looks like this: 

Yeah. I know some people don't like those shoes, but if I had money then I wouldn't mind getting those. They would be considerably heavier than my current shoes, the Adidas Crazy Shadows, though.

For those who don't know, I make my websites purely from HTML. It's what I'm most familiar with. So while it looks like what you see about now, for days it looked like this to me:

So much fun. I think my next investment now is to make myself some business cards. Or at least that's what my social media marketing professor is suggesting. Fingers crossed that my investments pay off and I can get a full time job. For now, I guess I'll just be a server at the Gaylord Texan Hotel. Oh yeah. I guess I forgot to mention that. I have a part-time job now! It's a seasonal job at the Gaylord Texan's Paradise Springs. It's basically like a Hawaiian Falls except for high class people. Let's hope this job gets me some good tips, unlike at freaking Studio Movie Grill. 

Hughie's and Life Updates

It's been a while since I've posted anything and I felt like since I wasn't doing anything right now that I would do a quick look at what I've been up to. Let's start from the top. I still haven't found a job and I've been stuck at home taking care of "mommy duties" due to family problems. When I say "mommy duties," I mean like waking up early to drop the kids/siblings off at school and going to pick them up when school was over which is all fine and dandy except for the fact that I have 7 hours of nothingness to burn. I found out that I would hate to be a stay-at-home mom.

On to my Hughie's project. While I haven't been able to find an actual job, I've been doing some freelance work for a restaurant/lounge that's opening in Houston sometime this year. The person that approached me is an acquaintance from church who's aunt owns this restaurant. When I first received my creative brief it was labelled as a casual Western themed bar/lounge. My job was to create a logo and to help with marketing. Sooo many logo designs were drafted between November until now and I'm still not sure which logo was chosen...

To see all the logo designs I drafted up, click the link below:
https://plus.google.com/photos/112994609708042405063/albums/5841725880853578785

Marketing is something that I'm not really comfortable with at all. I guess it's time to put my minor to use. Actually, I find that my ATEC class is more useful to me for this project than my marketing classes. Without my ATEC class, I would have never found out about HootSuite. So far HootSuite has been a lifesaver when it comes to digital marketing. What it is is a consolidation of different social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ all in one platform. This site allows me to create a post and post it on several different sites at the same time. It also allows me to schedule posts so that they'll show up at certain times so that my target audience can see them. Anyways, I hope this project provides me some useful experience that might land me an actual job. Freelance work probably can't support me cuz I don't have enough clients looking for me. Blehhh...

Seriously, though. I feel like I'm dying at home and need something to do. I think I would rather go back to my crappy job at Studio Movie Grill if it meant being productive. At least I made money. All I do at home is take naps while waiting til it's time to pick up the kids...

Is There No Hope?

It's only been a month since I graduated, but I already feel lost. I feel like there isn't a specific need for a graphic designer anywhere so job hunting has been terrible. Actually, it's more like there isn't a need for a graphic designer without any real work experience so I've been resorting to looking for internships to gain some experience. Another alternative to full-time graphic design jobs that I'm looking into is marketing jobs. I mean, being a marketing person might need some graphic design skills especially when it comes to creating promotional pieces. And I did get a marketing minor, right? I almost landed a job as a data entry person for a company that's starting up. It would have been a temporary gig, but that would have given me a buffer time to find another full-time job for when the data entry job is done. Plus, it would have been something else to put on my resume instead of that thing about Studio Movie Grill. My buddy Azim tried to help hook me up but I haven't gotten a call or anything so I'm pretty sure that's out the window. Gahhh! Everything is just really frustrating and I feel like a failure for not being able to get hired anywhere. I guess I feel pressured because my mom is getting on my back from going out with my friends to work out and stuff. She's complaining about me wasting gas and stuff which roughly translates to "you better sure as hell find a job to pay for that cuz I ain't paying for your crap anymore." Help meee!

Selling Yourself Short: Placing a Value on Freelance Work

Using crowdSPRING as a guide for freelance design pricing...

So I'm definitely in a pickle right now. Recently, I've managed to pick up a potential client and I'm trying to figure out the pricing for my services (no, not those kinds of services). For me, putting a price on my skills has always been a challenge. Up until this point, I've always sold myself "cheap" designing t-shirts and posters for free. Of course, that's because my projects were almost always for my youth group. I had two clients before that wasn't related to my youth group. One had requested a poster design for a youth rally, and in return for my help I received a $25 Target gift card and a tin of brownies. The other project was a logo design for my cousin's tax and bookkeeping services firm. For that, I earned $50 in cash.

The difference between this new project and my projects before is that this is going to be an established company. What it is is a Western themed bar and grill in Houston. Any logo that I create will ultimately be copyrighted and be associated with the company for(almost)ever. Since the person that asked me to do this job is a religious brother, I'm a bit reluctant to charge too much. My friend says to ignore that fact and treat it as only a business thing, that I shouldn't sell myself short. So what is a good price for a logo?

On top of the logo design, he asked me to help market and advertise the grand opening of the restaurant which is set to open early next year. I mainly consider myself a graphic designer so I feel uncomfortable even trying to set up advertising strategies. But then again, I got a marketing minor for a reason. Ugh. This is going to be wayyy outside of my comfort zone. Time to put my business classes to use.

Don't Be Afraid to Aim High

So here's my official rejection email from the marketing team for the Dallas Mavericks. My buddy Leon was surprised that I even applied because he said he wouldn't even have the confidence to try. It's not about confidence. It's about going after what you want. 

Long ago, back as a senior in high school, my advertising design teacher talked about when her son was going job hunting for a graphic design position. He applied starting at the most prestigious ad agency in Dallas and landed the job. When you aim high, you have a chance of actually starting out with a great job without having to climb from the bottom. Plus, it's not like your chances of getting hired somewhere decreases just because you were rejected somewhere else. I'm taking the tactic of applying at the most prestigious places first and moving down to the least prestigious. Rejected by the Mavs? Fine. Let's see if the Richards Group will take me. If not, there's still Reynolds and Reynolds. Worst case scenario is that I'd be stuck making brochure templates for printing shops. Let's hope I never have to apply for a job at that level. 

That being said, I will accept my rejection with a smile. Why? I've managed to impress a senior designer AND he gave me good tips. His advice actually does make sense, though. I use too much sans-serif fonts in my design and don't branch out into other typefaces. Adding logos to my portfolio is going to be tricky, but I can try. I'm not sure about going to portfolio school, though. I don't even know any portfolio schools nor am I really sure what is the definition of a portfolio school. I tried Googling it and all I got was stuff like the Art Institute and I cannot afford that. What to do...

Welcome to the Real World, Alyssa!

So I haven't really written a post in a while, and if you follow me on Twitter, you know why. Anyways, this is a just a little update about me getting thrown into the real world after living in my ivory tower so long. Recently, I've started a job at the new Studio Movie Grill that opened on Spring Valley. Honestly, I kinda hate it. I work as a server so my pay is really unstable since most of my pay depends on tips. Base pay is only $2.13 an hour, which is average for a waiter job. Everything else is tips, tips, tips. It's like the first week that this location has opened so the managers kind of overstaffed just cuz most of us are new and might need help. The bad thing is that the more people that we have in our little team, the more times we have to split our tip pool. Saturday I walked away with an okay amount of money for 10+ hours of work. Sunday was okay. Monday I only walked away with $10 for the 6 hours I was there. They put me in a 6-man team for a 2-man job. Bleh.

Another thing I hate about working at SMG is the fact that we don't have a definite end time for our shifts. They give us a start time and they'll keep us as they need us. Saturday I started at 10am and got stuck at work til 8pm. Sucked balls.

At least the people I work with are pretty cool (for the most part). I just hope that everyone I work with is reliable. Sunday I had a team member barely do anything. Every time I saw him, he was in the kitchen taking a drink break. And he walked away with an even share of the tip pool even though he didn't do scrap. Seriously? Ugh.

On to life after college. So you know how I went to a job fair back in September with Hien? Well, I got a call back from the Reynolds and Reynolds place. Went through an interview on Skype and got to the second step of the interview process. If I get this job, I'll be set the moment I graduate from college. The thing is, I know nothing about what to ask for for a yearly salary. It says on most of the websites I've been to that the average starting salary of a graphic designer is around $30,000 a year. Landing a job at Reynolds and Reynolds means that I would have to pack up and move to Houston. Can I live on $30,000 a year alone in Houston? Maybe. My parents were making a huge deal out of it saying that I should've tried to push for more and whatever. Ugh. I don't know what to do.

In the meantime, while that second step is going through, I'm still trying to find a job closer to home. I applied for an internship at the Richards Group and got rejected. Now I applied for a full-time position as a designer. If I can land this, then I can drop Reynolds and Reynolds and live at home and stay close to the people I know. I also applied for a graphic design internship for the Dallas Mavs. If I can land either of those jobs, I'll be fine.

So the moral of the story is, start applying for jobs before you graduate so that you'll have something lined up as soon as you get your diploma. That way, you won't have to bum around for a few months after graduation waiting for a job offer. The second moral is that waiter jobs are hard. Don't do it.

Attacking Catholics: Is This Something You Want to Include in Your Portfolio?

So I'm browsing through the graphic design tag on Tumblr when I come across this: a series of "posters" about pedophilia in Catholic churches:
http://overthewembo.tumblr.com/post/
32265987330/posters-about-pedophilia-in-catholic-churches

Okay. I'm about to go on this huge angry rant. Like, forreal. This  kind of stuff is not okay. Alright, I understand that the Catholic religion has been getting a lot of bad press because of child molestation charges against a few priests. But it's not like it's only happened to the Catholic church. I'm sure that there are some cases like this involving Baptist pastors. It's not like anyone is hating on Baptists. On top of that, is it really fair to attack a religion as a whole for the actions of a select few? People say it's insensitive to attack all Muslims for the actions of a few radicals that decided to carry out the September 11th attacks. Isn't it insensitive to do the same to Catholics?

ON TOP OF THAT, these images are a series done by a 24-year-old graphic designer to include in his portfolio. HIS PORTFOLIO. Really, is this something that you would want to include in your portfolio? Do you honestly think that your potential employers would find this a "tasteful" piece? I'm pretty sure that if this is the kind of aesthetics that you're into that you're going to have a hard time finding a job. These aren't even that cleverly done. Like, what the heck. All the guy did was throw in a few penises. The composition and the execution just suck. How long would it take to make all these "posters?" Probably less than 20 minutes. You know that kind of effort is going to land you a graphic design job.

Alright. End of my angry rant.

UTD Job Fairs are Pointless for Me

So in the light of my very recent rejection from the Disney College Program, I decided to hit up the UTD Career Fair with my good buddy Hien. Turned out to be a huge waste of time for me. Not that I'm surprised by that fact or anything.

Now, this isn't the first time that I've been to a career fair on campus. The last time I went, it was a lot less crowded. But huge crowds aren't the problem. The problem for me walking into any of these career fairs is the lack of variety in jobs or internships. What do I expect? UTD is a school focused on business and engineering and computer science. Of course there's mostly going to be job listings for program designers and business managers. Being a graphic designer, it's hard to find a niche in any of these job fairs. For artists, we have to rely on building connections elsewhere like on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. Meanwhile, business and computer science majors can just walk into these career fairs and boom! Opportunities everywhere!

My time spent at this job fair wasn't completely wasted. I did hand out a couple of copies of my resume (a couple being only 2). I handed one to the lady from Michaels (like the craft store) for a summer internship next year. Not exactly what I was aiming for, but if I have no job by the time summer rolls around again, I'll take it. The second resume went to a company called Reynolds and Reynolds. What they do is that they provide marketing and business solutions for automotive retailers. Luckily for me, they did have a graphic design internship even though it wasn't listed on the job fair's program. The only thing about this internship is that if I get accepted I'd have to relocate to Houston. That's not too bad, but I wouldn't have anywhere to stay.

So in essence, UTD needs to learn how to expand and accommodate these job fairs to not just business and computer science majors. That is all.

Another "Shocking" List of Worst College Majors for Your Career

Read the full article here.

     Honestly, I'm not shocked by anything that showed up on this list. Any kind of art degree is going to be considered "bad." I guess the world isn't so interested in developing a fine culture anymore. It's all about business, science, and technology. Just human advancement through the discovery of things in the world, not the discovery of the mind's potential.
     The high unemployment rate for art majors isn't completely shocking either. I would expect as much in such a highly competitive field. And on top of that, some people go and get an art degree despite the fact that he or she might not actually be built to become a good artist. Not that I'm hating on everyone who wants to be an artist. I'm just saying that you should definitely explore more into fields that you might be more well-suited for. I guess that's why UNT has such a competitive communication design program. 300+ students could be lined up to try and get into the program and at the end of 4 years, only about 50 kids would end up with a communication design degree because their portfolios got accepted. This kind of competition scared me so much that I transferred to UTD. A cowardly move? Maybe. I didn't want to waste 2 years of my college career studying art only to be rejected. I guess I should clump myself in with the other people who might end up being ill-fit for the art world.
     Actually, I don't regret my decision to transfer to UTD. Why? Because it's much easier to get a minor at UTD than it is at UNT. My major may be graphic design, but I made sure to have a backup plan in case I can't immediately find a job as a designer. My backup comes in the form of a marketing minor. Business is a pretty stable industry right now compared to art. If becoming an artist fails, at least I have enough knowledge to take my skills to the business world. If I do end up as a designer, my marketing knowledge will actually benefit me as well, especially if I'm going to be doing ad design.
     I guess what I'm trying to say is that you art majors shouldn't give up hope just yet! You can still be an artist. Just make sure you have a backup so that you don't end up in the unemployment numbers.

Finished my online portfolio!

Hooray! I've managed to complete my personal online portfolio! Oh my gosh. That took wayyy longer than I thought it would. When did I start? I think on Friday. And I just finished so that's about 4 days to build this site. I really do need to learn how to use Dreamweaver or something. Coding a website in pure HTML and CSS is the most tedious thing ever. The worst part for this project was including a lightbox for the graphic design and photography portion of the site. I've never used a lightbox before so I had to learn quickly how to implement jQuery and stuff like that. I guess this was a good learning process. At least I'll be satisfied with the layout of my site for a while and at least it sort of works across all browsers. I will forever hate Internet Explorer for making my life a living hell. My last layout was rather blah and it didn't appear correctly on Internet Explorer at all. Tien says that I should try using Blogger to build sites instead cuz it'll be easier to update. The only downside is that it's less customizable. Oh well. If you guys want to check out my portfolio, you can. I still haven't added any images to the photography section yet. I'll work on it later. I was more focused on the graphic design portion. But yeah!

Click to see my portfolio: http://ae221.co.nr (I'll try and get a more official domain later.)
Check out Tien's blog: http://hungrytien.com