Jennifer Collao, Cooper Hewitt, Second Blog Post
Hey guys,
Well, I started my internship the beginning of this week, and I'm absolutely enjoying my time at the Cooper Hewitt Educational Design Prep Program. I have two supervisors, Halima and Mariya. Mariya is the most down to earth person I've met in my life. She was the first person I meet from the educational sector of the Cooper Hewitt and she made me feel less intimidated on my first day. Then there's Halima, who is one of the coolest people I've had the pleasure to met. You know she just has that vibe that makes a person want to click with her. I also work with Brianna, another intern for the museum, and her jokes honestly helps get me through the long work day.
A regular day at the office would start with me coming in around 9:15 am to help Mariya and Halima with projects. This week, however, I had the pleasure to view the workshops the educational program was providing for NYC teachers. My favorite workshop involved a speech from Jason Bacher, the co-founder of Good *Bleeping* Design Advice. His company focuses on demonstrating the unorthodox creations of "products and experiences that challenge the thinking, discipline and passion of creatives and entrepreneurs" through lectures and workshops. Mr. Bacher's presentation was hilarious and insightful. One of his ideas, that failed in the best way possible, was a presidential election calendar that spanned over the course of four years. That's a pretty heavy calendar. One way the company promoted the prototype was through video, in order for it to get funded through kick-starer. Well, that video was the BEST thing I've seen this week. The link is below people, please watch it. Even though he wasn't able to raise enough money to move the prototype into production, the calendar drew a massive amount of media attention, it was even featured on CNN. Although, by the glance the project looked like a total failure, it wasn't, because at least something good came out of it. That's what the speaker taught me, to celebrate the bad outcomes because some good comes out of it.
HILARIOUS VIDEO: http://dreammachinecreative.com/work/the-out-of-office-calendar/
THEIR AWESOME WEBSITE: https://goodfuckingdesignadvice.com/#/advice/214
So, what do I do all day? Well by morning I help Halima and Mariya with their occupied workload. By afternoon, however, I am one of the emotional support staff for the Design Prep teenagers. It's a great position. Every week Design Prep focuses on a discipline for NYC teenagers to immerse themselves in. This was the first week of the program and they started off with Graphic Design. I'm not really an artistic person, mostly just a viewer. An art critic lets say, you know just to give myself a little credibility. My job is to help teenagers explore and dig deeper in their ideas for assigned projects. I had no idea what I was doing because first, I'm a little awkward when I first meet people. Yeah, so I was terrified the first day. Secondly, I had no idea what graphic design entailed, so exactly like most of the teenagers, I was a newcomer into the topic. I spent the first hour of the program just walking around nodding my head of approval to their sketches, acting like I knew everything about graphic design. Still, I felt like I need to give them better commentary on their work. So the next hour I spent watching Halima interact with the teens and mimicking her questions and feedback. In the end though, I just went back to what I did in the beginning and told everyone what they were doing was great. After the first day I knew I was a little bit in over my head, so I started to research about design. By the way, Vox is a great resource for anything and everything. I spent like a solid two hours looking through videos of design, mostly because they were really interesting. I guess one could say I was super prepared for the next day to give critical feedback. But, to be totally honest, I just said they were doing great again and mimicking Halima. Whoops.
Today was the end of the Graphic Design week and some of the teens aren't coming back. They grew on me and when I see them I call them my children, even though they're like three years younger than me. I know, it's not smart on my part. One of the students even gave me her project in the end because she saw how much I liked it, as an art critic of course. I'm glad I'm apart of this program and have the chance to work with amazing people. Like the kid the who ran downstairs after class today, "I gotta go drop my mixtape today, bye!"
Until next time my YAP friends.
- Jen
**SHOUT OUT TO LAS SEIS SENSACIONES, I MISS YOU GUYS**
Well, I started my internship the beginning of this week, and I'm absolutely enjoying my time at the Cooper Hewitt Educational Design Prep Program. I have two supervisors, Halima and Mariya. Mariya is the most down to earth person I've met in my life. She was the first person I meet from the educational sector of the Cooper Hewitt and she made me feel less intimidated on my first day. Then there's Halima, who is one of the coolest people I've had the pleasure to met. You know she just has that vibe that makes a person want to click with her. I also work with Brianna, another intern for the museum, and her jokes honestly helps get me through the long work day.
A regular day at the office would start with me coming in around 9:15 am to help Mariya and Halima with projects. This week, however, I had the pleasure to view the workshops the educational program was providing for NYC teachers. My favorite workshop involved a speech from Jason Bacher, the co-founder of Good *Bleeping* Design Advice. His company focuses on demonstrating the unorthodox creations of "products and experiences that challenge the thinking, discipline and passion of creatives and entrepreneurs" through lectures and workshops. Mr. Bacher's presentation was hilarious and insightful. One of his ideas, that failed in the best way possible, was a presidential election calendar that spanned over the course of four years. That's a pretty heavy calendar. One way the company promoted the prototype was through video, in order for it to get funded through kick-starer. Well, that video was the BEST thing I've seen this week. The link is below people, please watch it. Even though he wasn't able to raise enough money to move the prototype into production, the calendar drew a massive amount of media attention, it was even featured on CNN. Although, by the glance the project looked like a total failure, it wasn't, because at least something good came out of it. That's what the speaker taught me, to celebrate the bad outcomes because some good comes out of it.
HILARIOUS VIDEO: http://dreammachinecreative.com/work/the-out-of-office-calendar/
THEIR AWESOME WEBSITE: https://goodfuckingdesignadvice.com/#/advice/214
So, what do I do all day? Well by morning I help Halima and Mariya with their occupied workload. By afternoon, however, I am one of the emotional support staff for the Design Prep teenagers. It's a great position. Every week Design Prep focuses on a discipline for NYC teenagers to immerse themselves in. This was the first week of the program and they started off with Graphic Design. I'm not really an artistic person, mostly just a viewer. An art critic lets say, you know just to give myself a little credibility. My job is to help teenagers explore and dig deeper in their ideas for assigned projects. I had no idea what I was doing because first, I'm a little awkward when I first meet people. Yeah, so I was terrified the first day. Secondly, I had no idea what graphic design entailed, so exactly like most of the teenagers, I was a newcomer into the topic. I spent the first hour of the program just walking around nodding my head of approval to their sketches, acting like I knew everything about graphic design. Still, I felt like I need to give them better commentary on their work. So the next hour I spent watching Halima interact with the teens and mimicking her questions and feedback. In the end though, I just went back to what I did in the beginning and told everyone what they were doing was great. After the first day I knew I was a little bit in over my head, so I started to research about design. By the way, Vox is a great resource for anything and everything. I spent like a solid two hours looking through videos of design, mostly because they were really interesting. I guess one could say I was super prepared for the next day to give critical feedback. But, to be totally honest, I just said they were doing great again and mimicking Halima. Whoops.
Today was the end of the Graphic Design week and some of the teens aren't coming back. They grew on me and when I see them I call them my children, even though they're like three years younger than me. I know, it's not smart on my part. One of the students even gave me her project in the end because she saw how much I liked it, as an art critic of course. I'm glad I'm apart of this program and have the chance to work with amazing people. Like the kid the who ran downstairs after class today, "I gotta go drop my mixtape today, bye!"
Until next time my YAP friends.
- Jen
**SHOUT OUT TO LAS SEIS SENSACIONES, I MISS YOU GUYS**
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