Summary of First Full Week at MOS
I've completed a full week at the Museum of Science in Boston (MOS) and I'm looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. I had a nice introduction to the work culture before I even arrived for my first day when I was CC'd on an email that the director sent to our entire department introducing me in very kind words, letting everyone know when I'd be starting and suggested that people stop by during lunch to say hi. I also received some emails from a member of the department that included some kind words and helpful advice for my first day such as, "bring a sweater". These may seem like small gestures, but they are my first impression and as it's all I had to go on at the time, it made me feel optimistic about working with this team.
For my first day, the director gave me a tour of the museum campus and introduced to me quite a few people. The museum is huge; way larger than I had previously understood including a huge education wing that I had no idea existed. I come from Chicago, home of the Museum of Science and Industry and my understanding of MOS was that it was a great science museum, but that it's outreach and mission was on a much smaller scale than Chicago. While I'm still learning about MOS, I think it's safe to say that I underestimated its reach. My Chicago bias has been exposed. There is an entire department dedicated to working with other institutions. There is a library that provides science educational resources. It's quite involved in promoting education and scientific initiatives...it's great.
After getting the grand tour, I got to spend the rest of the day walking around the exhibits on my own. I tried to visit every exhibit, but I definitely spent more time in certain areas like technology and mathematics. I also got to take in a few shows and special exhibits: a special temporary exhibit A Day In Pompeii, an Omni film Greece: Secrets of the Past, a Planetarium show Undiscovered Worlds: The Search Beyond Our Sun, and the Lightening! Live Presentation in the Theater of Electricity.
For the rest of the week, I shadowed our Web Projects Manager to various meetings to meet members of other departments and get my footing on where we are in a massive web redesign project.
It's a great place doing wonderful work, a brilliant team, an interesting project (web redesign) and that only scratches the surface. I'd love to write more about everything I've learned this week; I'll hopefully manage to touch on the big topics. My general feeling right now is, "I can't believe I get to be here."
It's not all cupcakes and sprinkles though. The commute is about double what I anticipated and this last week has been hampered by purchasing a lemon of a vehicle that I thought would be a simple car to get me reliably to and from the T station. Unfortunately, there's a whole lot of problems with the car that are hopefully being fixed by the dealer (not likely...they've been awful and cheap) and I'm preparing myself to have to pursue a drawn out process for a refund. It's generally taking about an hour car drive to/from the T station and then another near hour on the T...four hours out of the day. It's a lot. I've been able to try out varying schedules and I'm liking the 8am-4pm time slot, and this'll do for a while. As much as I love and adore where I currently live, I suspect another move is in the not too distant future.
Fourth Day at MOS
So I have completed my fourth day at MOS and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I look forward to work, learning a lot and the people in my department all seem really great. I know it's early, but it does seem like an ideal environment.
Today I participated in two meetings, one with the visual audio folks where we discussed some ideas for integrating video on the website. This department has a lot of archival and current videos on hand, so we're going to have more talks about potentially integrating it into the new main website in the not-too-distant future, but we have to think about how to do it intelligently and consider how it will be managed and how to best present it on the site. We also had a department meeting where everyone summarized where we are with projects which is a nice way of keeping a large group of people integrated and on the same page. There are some really cool projects going on with work for exhibits and other systems, interesting stuff.
I've just gotten my first exposure to grid-based CSS, which I had read about a long time ago and Bonnie's brother had mentioned it to me as well, but I never really took it seriously as something to learn because I was more focused on learning classic CSS. It's a challenge because it's a very different way of thinking than I've been exposed to, but it actually makes a lot of sense and I think in the long run it'll be a much more efficient way of writing stylesheets.
This is really only another post to kind of briefly summarize what I actually want to write about in more depth if I have time. So additional potential topics:
- command line vs. GUI interfaces
- permanent marker on paint
- source code control systems
- HTML5 in an IE8 world
Second Day at MOS
Oh man, so today is the completion of my second day at the Museum of Science in Boston and my head is spinning. I've decided that I want to try my best to document what is going on in my life right now as best I can, but I have so little time and so much newness. I don't even know where to start. Hopefully this weekend I'll find some time to flush out some content that adequately summarized all I've experienced and learned this week. It's 9:30 and half an hour past my bedtime, which is to say that I have to get up by 5 and get home by 7 if I'm lucky and have NO time outside of work to be spending on blogging.
So, I'll make a very quick list of things that I want to elaborate on, and perhaps if I'm motivated I'll get back to it:
- Drupal stuff
- Standards and HTML5
- Museum organization stuff
- SASS
- Monitor ports
- Our friendly mouse
Yawn, stretch, good night and sweet dreams.
The Pragmatic Programmer
A while ago I was browsing online resources for information about programming and I had come across a reading list that recommended "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. I couldn't find it in the Ocean State Library System, but our awesome local librarians were able to track down a copy for me from the Salem State College Library in Massachusetts. Whoever says that library's are obsolete simply doesn't read enough. I'm so happy I have this book in my hands now and for free; thank you Tiverton Library.
It was written in 2000, which in technology-years is ancient, but it deals with general principles and universal problems, so for the most part, it really isn't very dated.
One section I love talks about investing in your "knowledge portfolio". They're speaking my language. The basic idea is that the value of knowledge declines unless you continue to invest in it. Technology advances, market forces shift, environments are always changing and the value of your knowledge can quickly become obsolete or devalued. "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. -Benjamin Franklin".
Managing your "knowledge portfolio" isn't so different than managing your financial portfolio.
- Invest Regularly (Learn constantly)
- Diversify (The more technologies you are comfortable with, the better you will be able to adjust to change)
- Manage Risk (Don't put all of your technical eggs in one basket)
- Buy Low, Sell High (It can pay off to learn an emerging technology before it becomes popular)
- Review and Rebalance
I guess I already knew all of that, but I never really thought of it as good, sound advice from a career advancement perspective. I just saw learning and trying new technologies as essential to staying passionate about what I do and I simply trusted that persistence and experience will pay off in the end. I like how they dissected those ideas and provided clarity that I can use to make better choices about my goals and how I spend my time.
New Job in Boston
I have some great news. On Monday, I'm about to begin what I believe is a very exciting chapter in my work life. I'll start my first day working as a web & interactive developer at the Museum of Science in Boston. As a friend of mine so eloquently put it, that is "Alpha-Geek status...some seriously sexy stuff". The requisite Facebook announcement garnered nearly as many likes & comments as my birthday, and while I'm sure that many of those are from friends and family who are simply happy for me, I'm sure that the overwhelming response is because it's for the Museum of Science.
There is a lot to be excited about, but what really has me glowing is that it's an opportunity to do something I'm personally connected to and to advance my techie skills. Chock it up to hitting my 30's, but somewhere along my adventures through early adulthood, I've developed a yearning to do something with my life that contributes to making things a little bit better. To work for a museum that focuses on science and education and provides hundreds of visitors a few hours of fun, that's rewarding. That's something I want to be a part of.
It also just sounds like a great opportunity to advance my web skills and work with technologies I haven't had a chance to try out yet. It should be fun and challenging...perfect.
Now of course I'm a bit nervous and I'm sure it will have some stresses that I don't foresee...but that's called life. So far, everyone I've met has been incredibly friendly and helpful.
Getting this new position has reignited the spark I felt when I had just completed school and started my new position at my most recent job; I just wanted to learn learn learn and try something new. Now it feels like it's happening all over again, and to top it off, it comes with a free Segway tour of Boston.
Wish List: The perfect office
An article posted on the ReadWriteStart channel called From Co-Working to Cubicles: Where are you Working? got me to daydreaming about my ideal work environment.
I'd repost some pictures of awesome offices like the Twitter office, but the images are copyright protected, so a link will have to suffice.
Here goes:
- I want to be able to take my office with me. I don't think humans are best suited to repeatedly sit in the same spot of the same room every single day. How often do people start looking for a new job just because it's time? To me, that means, "I can't take looking at that Ansel Adams photo one more time. This place is starting to kill my soul." I mean, if you REALLY think about it, it's sort of strange that we live in the same place every day. Don't misunderstand me; I love the concept of home. It's comfortable, safe, etc...but isn't it just a little bizarre to think about the fact that most people have a certain small area of the world that they reserve as their own? Is that natural? I'm digressing. The point is, I'd love to wake up and say, "Wow, I have a lot of work to do, but I am so sick of being in the house" and I'd be able to go to a coffeehouse or on a nice day, a park or an outside patio.
- Portability is ideal, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want a home office. I do want a place that is reserved for me to work in that I can rely on to be quiet, comfortable, and where I can store my equipment, projects, and supplies safely. My ideal home office will be organized, but not too organized. I will have a specific place for all of my papers and things, and it will be clean, but not sterile. I will have inspiring things hung up on my wall (not kitten posters with motivational quotes. More like artsy travel posters of the imaginary planets from Serenity. There's a small chance I might already have those.) I will have a lot of plants. I will have a comfy couch, a spacious desk and a beautiful desktop computer. There will be a coffee pot really near by and I will have a favorite mug. My office will be stocked with great pens.
OK, so that's really about it. Now, if I do not work from home and instead work in an office with real life co-workers, here is my ideal scenario:
- It will be near my house so that commuting will not be a major part of every day of my work week and the parking will be easy.
- The building will make genuine efforts to be eco-friendly.
- There will be lots of huge windows overlooking a pleasant landscape (a skyline, forest, ocean...that sort of thing). My desk will be positioned right next to a window.
- Lots of plants
- Good lighting, none of that fluorescent stuff.
- An open floor-plan and high-ceilings.
- It will have some color to it.
- There will be a coffeepot really near by.
- Oh, there will also be a workout room, a pool, a rooftop patio, and a really good Mexican restaurant with great happy hours. Hush now; this is my dream.
So that's my dream folks. If I blog it, it will happen.
The Practice of Recreation
After taking several computer-based design classes, I've come to expect at least one assignment per course to be some sort of variation of recreating an image as accurately as possible using the tools and techniques taught in class. We did this twice in Illustrator and I'm amazed at how much progress is visible between my first recreation project and my last one. The first attempt was much harder and looks much worse, BUT it was part of the learning process. I struggled to get Illustrator to recognize specific objects as selections. I struggled to get colors to work. It was a pain and I hated how it looked! HOWEVER, that assignment made me much more grateful for everything I learned later.
Early in the course, we were to recreate an image from a list of themes (being a bookseller, I chose the literary theme.) Here it is in all its glory:
original image (L), my frustrating attempt at recreating it (R)
The end of our course culminated in a three-part final project, part of which was to recreate a wine label as accurately as possible. I have to say, everyone in my class improved so much. It was awesome. We had to get each of our three illustrations printed and mounted to present on the final day of class and some of the work was simply breathtaking. I went to (risd)prints by concept link in Providence because they work with the RISD community. I had my wine label printed on a huge piece of archival paper that would normally cost about $75, but as a student, cost closer to $25. I recommend them, although they can get really backed up at the end of a school semester; I was lucky and was able to get all of my stuff done within about two hours.
original wine label (L), my recreation of the label (R)
The vast majority of the time spent on the wine label project was spent using the pen tool to create all of the shapes. The text for "Orangedale Sunflower Brand" was also created using the pen tool, but I typed in the smaller pieces of text with fonts from my computer that matched closest to the original poster fonts.
To create the shapes, I placed the original image on its own layer and lowered the opacity to somewhere around 50%. Then, I put on some good music and settled in with the pen tool.
original image with lowered opacity and the beginnings of the shape tracing
near the end of the tracing period w/ the original image turned off
larger image of my recreated wine label
The trickiest part to recreate was the center of the flower. It'd be nearly impossible to trace because it is simply too detailed and busy. My teacher asked me how I planned on doing the center of the flower, and I said I was thinking of using the symbol tool to spray a bunch of custom symbols inside of a circle shape. She told me one of my classmates was having a huge issue with his file size after using the spray tool for a similar issue (in his case, he was trying to recreate plants in a field).
I told her I'd try using a pattern instead. She suggested creating a few circle shapes on different layers with transparent backgrounds. That would create a more random detailed effect. I think it was a time-saving tip that worked pretty well. Now I have nice print that I'm going to frame and put somewhere in our new apartment.
Chicago Olympic 2016 poster
This is the poster that I chose to base my event poster off of:
Original World's Fair Chicago Poster (1933)
I love the colors, the type, and the general sense of organized chaos. Here is the event poster I created for class:
Chicago Olympics 2016 poster
Certainly there are things I want to change and work on, but I'm very happy with it overall given the amount of time I had to work on it. I'm proud of myself for trying some techniques that I'm new to and learned some new things along the way. I deem this a success.
The main pieces I want to work on are all of the pieces of text. The tracking and spacing of the paragraphs at the bottom are truly awful, but I just didn't have enough time to fix that. I also need to get rid of that dead space above the Olympic logo. The list of venues on the right isn't tight and seems to draw too much focus to itself, so I'd work on that as well.
I like the buildings and the colors used on them. I like the backgrounds of the left and right columns. I kept on creating a pattern swatch using the splatter brush, but it kept looking terrible when I applied the pattern to the background. Finally, I just used the symbol sprayer and it created the random look I was aiming for. I like that the background looks like stars and that it contains faint hints of the building color scheme.
I struggled with Live Paint on some spots, but managed to work around those problems well enough.
Now let's hope Chicago can add another star to the Chicago flag in 2016.
Why arc and angle?
My aim with this blog is to learn about, explore, and share design ideas, creations and processes. At this point in time, I imagine I'll probably focus largely on graphic and web design, but I see design as a state-of-mind that can be a part of nearly anything rather than any particular occupation. I'm open to thinking about creative processes and functionality in any form (graphic, computer, product, furniture, architecture, clothing...ad infinitum).
I simply want this to be fun and exploratory. I'm not a design expert. I won't pretend to be. I'm hardly even a design apprentice. I'm just interested in it and hope that's enough to keep the blog rolling.
So welcome, thanks for viewing my blog and if you have any advice, tips, related commentary or questions, please don't be shy.