Lessons about…day to day work
5. Every project takes at least 2 hours longer than you think it will---usually it takes two days longer
Ashley passed me this bit of wisdom about a month into my internship and I have a feeling that I will be passing it on to my own interns or students one day because it is true.
Since I was on a limited schedule at NASM (existing of only about 3 hours of work a day), it was sometimes hard to get into the groove of working on a project. With creative projects, I’ve found that I often work a bit like my car in winter—slow to warm up and shift into the correct gear, but capable of long trips after that. Sometimes I just need a bit of time to get in the right gears to be productive. The result at NASM, though, was that I occasionally felt like I had just gotten started when I had to leave my work to go to a meeting. I remember showing up several times thinking that I would be able to finish a project by the time I left that day. But when all was said and done, and my three hours were up, I was usually not nearly as close to finishing as I thought I would be.
On top of this, once projects are completed, they have to go through an approval process, often several proof processes, and then finally a production stage before the work can get on the floor.
As a perfect example, I finished a visitor services sign the week before I left that was supposed to inform visitors that they could carry water bottles with them, but that all other food and drink had to be thrown out before they entered the museum.
Three weeks later I got an email from Ashley showing just how badly they needed to get their signs up!
Occasionally, a project would get out with just a couple of days turnaround, but this was typically controlled by the staff in charge of the approval process more than the designers.
6. Sometimes you need a little GLEE
As a designer, sometimes the task is pretty mundane. For example, one of my major projects was to manipulate basic Illustrator line drawings into a drawing format that could be read by a router and cut out as a 3-D tactile display. The final product was made of metal and the front view of the airplane in each one had to be a cut out that showed depth and allowed visitors to feel the shape of the plane. Once I figured out how to visualize what the 3-D final product would look like, manipulating the line drawings was not hard, but it was very time consuming.
On these days, a little music went a long way. My favorite soundtrack at the time was Volume 1 and 2 of GLEE, which I plugged into my IPod and rocked out to as I worked. Others in the office used their music to get them started each day and IPods and Pandora are common.
7. The proof is in the…proof
Because most computer monitors are not calibrated, the color you see on the monitor usually does not match the color that will print. Printing materials, as well as gallery lighting, can also affect how a color looks on display. For this reason alone, printing proofs is extremely important, but proofs also give you an opportunity to pick up on design discrepancies, misspellings, and poor image quality. The proof stage is also vital because it gives the entire team (designers, writers, editors, curators) a chance to look at your work and make comments and suggestions. This is also the time when a lot of dialogue and creative thinking can take place between colleagues. At NASM the hallway en route to the exhibits offices showcased works up for proofs and it was always fun to stop and check out the progress. As an intern, it also gave me a lot of opportunities to notice how good the designers were, and to give me something to work towards!
Up Next: Lessons learned about finished products
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