RTC Chronicles

The following is a collection of my journal entries for my graphic design internship at RT-Corporation. This will be updated as I complete them:









Date: May 8 2008

I receive an email from Jenny, my graphic designer professor, informing me of a internship opening at RT-Corporation. I immediately respond to the offer.




Date: May 14 2008

Today I went to an interview with Lee, the marketing directory at RT-Corporation, and with Bob, the head director at RT-Corporation. They ask me about my graphic design work and inform me they are looking for someone especially skilled in inDesign. They are also looking for someone to do photography work. The interview goes really well.





Date: May 15 2008

I got the JOB! I will be working 20 hours a week and I can work from home. This is really nice since I am working at IT too. Working from home will give me extra free time.




Date: May 19 2008

Today I went in for my first day of work at my graphic design internship. I go over what I need to do. I meet Kara, another intern that I'll be working with. She is in the graphic design class above me and seems nice. We all talk and get to know each other. I find out that Lee is a kayaker too. We both have fun trading stories about our paddling adventures. Then down to business... Lee wants us to design layouts for the main catalog and come back with our initial ideas. We'll take the best elements from both of our designs and combine them into the final catalog. He also wants us to design covers. He gives us the previous year's catalogs and all he tells us is to vastly improve upon it. EEEEK! I hate wide open assignments like this.




Date: May 26 2008

This week I worked on designing the layout for the main RTC catalog. I wanted to get away for the cut and paste template look of the previous year's catalog. I design mostly in reflex blue. This is RTC's logo color. I show my designs to Lee and I see Kara's designs too. I really like her cover designs. She printed them out and they look really nice. I need to print my stuff out because that seemed to really impress Lee. Having something to hold is much more powerful than seeing it on a computer screen.

Date: June 5th 2008

I received a new project from Lee. He wants me to design the Pharmaceutical Reference Standards catalog. This will contain all of RTC's products. He wants me to design about 16-32 pages of color including logos, and photographs. The rest of the catalog, approximately 200 pages, will be black and white. This will save on printing costs. He also wants me to design the cover. Lee wants the cover to be innovative to show that RTC is moving forward.

Date: June 12th 2008

I work on the initial layout for the catalog. Lee sends file after file of content for me to layout on the pages. I scour istockphoto for images to use for the catalog.

Date: June 19th 2008

I work on the initial layout for the catalog. Lee sends me file after file of content for me to layout on the pages. All the products are in an excel database that I must pull to use in the catalog. There are literally thousands of products. Copying and pasting takes hours. My hand hurts from laying product after product out. I scour google for an easier way. I learn that excel documents can be imported as tables. Then I can more easily layout the products from there. This saves me hours of work. Wish I would've done that sooner.

Date: June 26th 2008

The past two weeks I have spent laying out a basic template for the catalog and have worked out two ideas for the cover. Shown here:

Lee wants me to go with the 2nd design. I have learned that what I have been taught in design classes doesn't really apply to the working world. I'm not free to design how I believe or know how it should be. Basically I'm just there to get whatever whimsicle idea the boss has to show up on paper. Even if that means making swooshes and other non-sensical elements on the page. I just have to make sure that those swooshes and things are graphically good design.

Date: June 27th 2008

My initial layout for the product list is approved by Lee. The cover is also approved. I now begin laying at the pages and scour istockphoto for stock photography. iStockPhoto rocks! Throughout the week Lee sends me corrections to certain pages.

Date: July 3rd 2008
The catalog is done! Lee creates an FTP site for me to upload all of my files and images to. I talk to the printer to find out what they need exactly. I prepare my inDesign files to send off to the print press.

Date: July 14th 2008
I get a frantic call from Lee while I am on vacation. The printers need 8 more pages to bind the catalog correctly. I'm on vacation but I tell him I'll do it. It shouldn't take too long. To get the best printing costs a book's pages should be divisible by 16. For the next best price it should be divisible by 8. Anything in between cannot be done because a book cannot be bound correctly. This is why you often see blank pages at the beginning/end of a book.

I complete the extra pages that night and send the file to Lee. Then he calls me saying that the head boss wants a different footer on the pages. We push back the print date. I'm frustrated at this. Argg....

When I get back I meet with Lee. He has more bad news. Bob, the main boss wants to change the product list and he doesn't like my innovative cover. He wants the cover to look like last year's catalog. This really upsets Lee because it means pushing back the printing date even longer. I'm upset too because I had everything approved and now I have to practically redo everything. Argg... They give me a strict deadline to have all the redos completed in four days! AHHH!

Adding and/or deleting products from my layout means going through by hand and readjusting every single page because deleting something from one page makes the layout change for every other page. To get this done in time I work non-stop all day. My eyes are literally numb from staring at my computer screen for so long and my wrist aches. I contemplate just quitting this job because it's not worth it. Working with others on a project is a pain in the butt.

But, I finally get it done. I post my updated files to the FTP site. Here is my more conservative cover compared to my other cover:

I actually like this new cover because I took last year's boring cover and made it my own. I didn't copy a thing but used elements that were the same. I kept the blue streak from my other catalog and put chemical structures inside of it. I got rid of all the pictures that were actually a bit distracting. I actually like the redesigned cover a lot. Plus it saves a lot of money since I only used two colors.

Date: July 22nd 2008

The catalog is shipping! It will be here in a few days. I'm going to Las Vegas so I won't get to see it right away. I'll be excited to see it when I get back.

Date: July 31st 2008

I get a copy of my catalog! It is so exciting to see all of my work in printed format. I can't believe that my work is being shipped to people all over the world. Lee gives me another catalog to work on. It is the PT Catalog. He wants me to design the cover and redesign the inside. He also wants a new logo to show that RTC is a green company.

The green logo for RTC should look like the recycle logo with RTC in the middle and in green.

Date: August 7th 2008

I finish working on the cover and creating the RTC green logo. I kept elements from last year's catalog. I changed the cover by lining everything up using a grid system. The RTC green logo is the RTC main logo with recycling arrows around it. Lee likes the idea. I also completed the layout of the magazine. Now I'm just waiting for text and other changes to add to the body of the catalog.

Date: August 14th 2008

I finish the PT Catalog. Lee gives me an extra assignment. The RTC limited company in Great Britain wants me to reformat the RT Pharma catalog to be in A4 paper size format. Different countries have different standards in paper size. The United States commonly uses A3 and letter sized while most of the rest of the world uses A4. To resize the pages I have to go through and re format all of the pages.

This also is the end of my official internship. If you want to see the actual catalogs instead of just pictures on this blog, please let me know. The RT Pharma Catalog is 208 pages. The PT Catalog is 64 pages.