Joshua E. J. Young

Today is supposed to be the day we launch our ad campaign, which is exciting. We will be spending any remaining time in our day trying to finish going through our list of contacts and picking out any leads for Justin to follow.

There were also donuts today, so that was neat.

As the end of this program approaches, I have come to the conclusion that I am no more prepared for a real world position now than I was before this internship started. I graduate in four short months, and unless these 12 final credits really fill a lot of holes in my education, then I am going to be entering the workplace vastly unprepared.

I have started looking into graduate programs, hoping they may be able to fill some of the holes in my knowledge.

One of the things I’ve noticed in various office tours is the trend of an open office space. It makes sense for ad agencies and other more collaborative places to embrace this open flow culture. I always thought it would be something I would enjoy in my future employment as someone who likes brainstorming, idea sharing, and just chatting with coworkers.

Unfortunately, I have begun to notice the disadvantages of this type of workspace in my time at the SPARK office. The open flow space can be very distracting. There is a lot of movement around the office as well as plenty of noises whether that be people talking, phones going off, or music.

When we saw WordPress wan an option for our blogs, Hannah and I had thought it would be a great way to get some exposure to the site before we used it to update AlertWatches website. Turns out that was not the case. The layout for these simple blog post is completely different from the layout of the website, which offer many, more complicated options for design/layout.

Having zero experience with webdesign and coding, I have had a lot of trouble trying to change the layout of the page. All we have been able to do is go through and update the text on the page, but even that isn’t supposed to be published so we can only change the text of one page at a time.

It has been a really frustrating day, it feels like each time we take one step forward, we take 2 steps back.

Today I will be working from home again, focusing on trying to find sales leads using an attendance list that Justin shared with me. We were hoping to work more on finalizing our new website layout, but unfortunately, I am stuck at home after my surgery Friday.

I am hoping to have doubled our list by the end of the day, which sounds impressive but would only be a growth from 12 to 24.

Today Hannah and I are working remotely from the Halle Library in order to avoid Ann Arbor Art Fair traffic. Our main task for today is to create more polished versions of our fairy tale ads using Adobe Illustrator. Our job is to create a layout as a template with the copy for each individual ad, then Angela from AlertWatch will be creating the graphics. We are hoping that we can proivde enough detail in our notes to ensure that the graphics turn out how we are envisioning them, since we won’t be with Angela when she is creating these visuals, and we don’t want to have to go back and forth multiple times.

We have run into a bit of a challenge working remotely, realizing it is more difficult to check in and ask questions since replies are taking longer to get to us.

After submitting our advertising proposal to Justin, we began the task of wireframing the new website. We have put this task aside for a couple weeks now out of confusion as to what exactly was expected of us, as well as uncertainty of what WordPress would be capale of doing since our free version for our blogs really limits your creative freedom.

We started by doing quick sketches on paper, which only took like 10 minutes and are now creating the wireframes in PowerPoint so that we can inclue the website’s copy. It’s nice to finally be making some progress with the website since it was our primary objective for the summer.

Well, I took another wack at infographics, and I think I’m getting closer to where I need to be. This attempt was more simplified, having less images and more negative space. I think it does a good job of conveying 2 key advantages to using AlertWatch, increased safety and decrease in cost. I’m wondering though if the decrease in cost is something that hospitals are going to want. Obviously it appeals to paitents, as hospital bills can be crazy expensive. But would a hospital’s board of directors be interested in a decrease in more than $3000 in hospital charges. I guess the success of this infographic, as all things, will really come down to who we are targeting.

Here is the infographic

I’ve been having some trouble creating quality infographics, as I haven’t had any experience with them in the past. I have plenty of experience creating posters, flyers, and other more content heavy pieces. Trying to pick out and highlight limited information, then display it visually has been difficult.

Hannah and I had each created our own versions of infographics highlighting the same information (AlertWatch’s Intergration, Analyze, Display). Justin picked her design based on it’s simplicity and clarity. I really liked how mine turned out, so the rejection obviously bummed me out a little. But, I can see where he’s coming from, it would make a nice handout or page in an information booklet, but it’s just too much for an infographic. Below is the design I made.

Prior to this internship, I had not spent much time in Ann Arbor. I had previously felt that the traffic, road closures, pedistrians, and narrow roads all make navigating the city more trouble than it was worth. After spending some more time out here this summer, I have grown to see these things as a sort of neccesaery evil.

The energy that all these people and cars and movement create is different from the Ypsilanti vibe I have grown to love. I can’t see myself moving here quite yet, but I can definitely see city life in my future.

The parking enforcement could probably chillax a little. Parking in a spot 8 minutes early doesn’t really seem like it deserves a $25 ticket, but oh well.