R-e-l-e-v-a-n-t-M-A-G-A-zine

So technically we aren’t your average micky mouse club, but the growing population of interns at Relevant is becoming the joke. It actually almost seems like there are more unpaid interns than paid employees at the office. I offically mark the end of week one/eight and the beginning of week two. I apologize for the lack of updates, it did get a bit busy and tiring after wednesday. It is almost surreal that I am desiging in a real-world place. Relevant Magazine is extremely challenging because it aims for higher standards than most christian magazines do. I love the challenge of being restricted to one or two font faces and working through problems. It is always rewarding when you finish a small project (ie story graphics) that you struggled with for hours only to find in the end you just needed 15 mins with a different picture. Thursday was a calm day. There was a much needed calmness and quietness floating thick through the office before lunch. Every 20 mins or so you do get a quick shake from the train that passes behind us. Friday was an even better day. I was given my first non-story graphic assignment, it was reworking an ad for Zondervan. For a moment, I felt a rush of excitement because everything that I have learned the past two semesters has helped me in one week. Thank you professors at Evangel for preparing me for the requirements this job did not publish. Its always nice to recognize terms that your professor used. Nonetheless, I spent a few hours rebuilding an ad from files hidden in different parts of the network. Come to find out at the end of the day, I produced it in the wrong program. I did it all in photoshop, problem one. I had a gut feeling it was supposed to be produced inDesign, but someone gave me to the “ok” to do it in Photoshop. It wasn’t until 15 mins before the end of the work day that I was told how wrong I was. I was partly embarassed that I did my first “real” assignment wrong, but mostly I felt guilty that I spent hours working on something on Relevant’s time to do something that will need to be redone. Luckily, I have a really cool director that was semi-supportive of the fact that it wasn’t technically my fault and that we will fix it on monday. I will admit the last hour of friday’s day was a hectic, I was busy getting a story graphic whipped out in a limited amount of time and the ad and also emailing.

In other news, Florida has been treating me way well. Saturday about nine of us went to Wekiwa Springs and went canoeing. Jen, a fellow design intern hailing from Truman State in Colombia, Mo., was my canoe partner. I apologize for my lack of skills. I talked a good game but didn’t follow through. We did see about a half dozen turtles, 1 water moccassin crossed our path, and 3 gators. Seriously, seeing alligators in the wild swimming by our boats gave a wierd rush that was cool. I also spent the other half of the day shopping (don’t worry I only bought one thing) all throughout Orlando. I ended up at the Florida Mall and found this really awesome fitness store called Paiva. I found a sweet pair of nike running shorts for ten dollars. And here are a few pictures of my little cousin:

That’s all for now. I will update more this week.