Something I haven’t told you yet is that I’m now guest-blogging 2 times a month for Underground Art School. My first post went up Tuesday morning—and my plan is to repost them here a couple of days after, so here it goes:

Some nights you will find yourself sipping on a Red Bull trying to stay awake to finish a 2-D project due the next morning. Due to the caffeine shakes you won’t be able to fall asleep when you finally finish and wind up having a mere two hour window to nap before class. Don’t sweat, we’ve all been there before-you can and will get through this! Here’s my guide to surviving your foundation year:

Defend Your (Good) Ideas

One of the hardest parts of foundation year is being told “No” to an idea that you think is awesome. Sometimes the way you explain your best ideas make them an easy target to be shot down. Learn how to explain the most important parts of your ideas with confidence, and when you are met with resistance, learn how to defend your ideas with persistence if they are, in fact, a good idea. This leads me to my next point…

Don’t be Afraid to Throw Away an Idea You’re Invested In

Art school is about learning how to come up with a vision, following it through, realizing it’s awful, understanding why it’s awful, and tossing it to the side. You will have a lot more awful ideas than good ones when you start, you will spend a lot of time trying to make these awful ideas into good ideas, and you’ll be hesitant to cast them off due to the amount of time you’ve invested. Chalk it up to experience and move on. It is OK to have a bad idea. The best part about a bad idea is it always leads you to something better. Art School teaches you how to weed out those bad ideas from the first seed.

Critique Without Bullshitting

Nothing is worse in foundation year than staying up all night, putting your blood, sweat, and tears into finishing a project due the next morning and then you get to class and have to listen to a bunch of timid students either say nothing in response or bs about your work.
“I really like that you used green. It’s very organic”—that is not a critique, it’s a comment, and the word ‘organic’ is possibly the most overused word in the average art student’s critique lexicon. Don’t be that student. It’s OK to have an opinion in a critique, we’re not here to rub noses, we’re here to offer our honest opinions on the work presented and offer ideas on how to make it better. I remember being nervous in my foundation year that if I was to say anything too harsh that it would make it harder for me to make friends (as I would be labeled as ‘that bitch in critique this morning’). Don’t take critique comments as being a jab at you, the artist, the student. You are learning skills in foundation year, these skills and how they are applied are being critiqued. In the same vein, learn how to critique your own work in the same way.

Learn How to Generate Ideas

Always, always, always idea-generate before starting a project, regardless if it’s an applied arts or fine arts class. Even if you think you’re dead set on your initial idea; sketching, envisioning, and talking over other options might help you to make that first idea stronger or realize that there is an entirely different route you should be taking. The ideas you come up with when you are pushing yourself to brainstorm oftentimes can be the best ones. Make lists, write word associations, flip through books at the library, sketchbook, .

Save your Unused Ideas

I always wrote down lists in my sketchbooks of ideas that I—someday—wanted to pursue. Occasionally I’ll go back and read lists from freshman year and I’ll say “Wow that’s brilliant.” But more often than not I’ll say, “What the hell was I thinking?!!” No matter how small, write down your ideas that you haven’t used just yet, you’ll never know when they’ll come in handy, and if anything, they will show your progression and commitment to your art.

If you have questions you’d like answered about art school please email me! You can always check if I’ve answered it already. If your question becomes a post topic you will always remain anonymous.

So you’re thinking of getting an internship?  Good idea, lucky for you a bad economy doesn’t hurt your chances of getting an internship.  In fact, in times like these big companies cut full-time positions and replace that staff with interns—the ethics of that may be something to discuss at another time but for now, use it to your benefit.  Good luck!

Decide what area(s) you want to learn more about - Do you want to learn more about the behind-the-scenes of magazines? Maybe you’d like to intern at a publication or editorial website. How marketing works in fashion/design/advertising? Why not try an internship in marketing or PR? How web design agencies work? Intern at one! Internships are great because not only do they let you test out the waters of a future career—but they also help to gain real world experience that you would never gain from school.

Make a list of prospective places you would like to work - Magazines, agencies, companies, anything! Do some research on the website; they may list available internships under the Careers tab, if not, look around the site for contact information and call or email them asking for the contact information about the employee or department that handles interns.

-OR-

Look for an opportunity - Craigslist, Fashionista, Ed2010, and the SPD Job Board have been a good start when I’m looking for online listings. I’ve also had a bit of luck with word of mouth.  My W internship was sparked by talking to a friend of a friend about career goals, turns out his best friends sister worked in the art department.

Apply - Send a well-formatted, spell-checked, and professional resume and coverletter.  Make sure to include a digital-portfolio (pdf or website) or writing samples based on the type of internship you’re applying for.

Interview – Dress professionally and bring a resume!  PSDTuts has a good resource for preparing and talking about your graphic design portfolio.  Do research the company before hand and think of questions to ask (and answers to questions that you may be asked during the interview.)  Be sure to follow up and say thank you after the interview!

Talk to your advisor – Due to labor laws many internships require you get school credit—sometimes this can suck.  I have always found a creative work-around so that I haven’t had to pay extra tuition to take an internship, which at Parsons is $1000 per extra credit.  Options include registering your internship as independent study, or (I’ve never tried this) them writing a letter that makes it seem like you’re receiving school credit. Ed2010 offers advice about getting around a credit-only internship.

For the more seasoned readers; what was your first internship and how did you find it?

Hey Kate, I am entering my Foundation Year at Parsons this fall and I’m so excited! But I’m nervous that it’s going to be super competitive. Is it?

At Parsons, I feel like there is some competition… but most students tend to be friendly and open. As you go on from Foundation Year and separate into your own majors you kind of become a family within your major (at least that’s the way it is in Communication Design). I know we occasionally make fun of how much the Fashion Design students complain, but hey, they do! My personal outlook is that while we are in school we should share knowledge and try to create lasting bonds and contacts with our classmates. By the end of Junior year, in Communication Design ‘10 we already know each others strengths and certain skills or insights we would like to learn from our peers. I’ve had teachers who have tried to pit us against one another saying “You’ll be fighting kids in this class for THAT job after school—know each others weaknesses!”… while with the state of the economy maybe the graduating seniors may feel like it’s a snake pit, I think its important to feel confident in your own strengths and learn how to work well in a team you trust that can make up for your shortcomings. I think what seperates graphic design from other industries in some ways is, or should be, the community.

A reader recently emailed me asking me what my opinion is on studying design (her question was specifically graduate school for design & management) in New York City (Pratt, Parsons, SVA, FIT) vs studying at a State University or somewhere else outside NYC.

Yes, I was the same way when faced with the prospect of going to school in the city “Design is what I want to do, and
New York City has the best opportunities for me to do it.”—and still today I think that’s pretty true. But speaking from personal experience, there are opportunities everywhere, and while in New York they may be easier to find, sometimes you need to think of what kind of life is best for you. One 10-person dorm room, two nearly-terrible apartment situations, two semesters of commuting and three years of school under my belt makes it easy for me to say that living in New York wasn’t and may never be the best living situation for me.

The three questions I wish I had asked myself are:

1. Does this school offer the best program for me or is there a College/University elsewhere that may have a curriculum better suited to my needs? While New York may have great opportunities, you are looking for a school to learn and that should be your first priority. There is plenty of time to utilize New York City for internships or jobs during summer break or post-graduation.

2. NYC has many perks—but do I have the money/energy to enjoy them? I’ve found in my experience that NYC is very much based on ‘going out’ but at the end of a long day/week of classes I rarely had the energy to go out and enjoy the museums, parks, etc that the city had to offer. That’s not to mention that I prefer having people over rather than going to bars and never had the money or desire to drink so I never got a fake ID. Again, this is based on personal preference.

3. Are you ready to live dangerously close to the life of an adult? The reader who asked me was looking for advice to make a decision on graduate schools and probably has her share of ‘life experience’… so this is more for students looking for undergrad study—are you ready to grow up and sacrifice a ‘typical’ college experience? Going to school in the city is a lot like living like an adult (minus, perhaps, your parent’s financial backing and having an actual career). I’m not sure about SVA or Pratt but Parsons has limited on-campus housing, activities, parties, and community in general. Because of this and other reasons, friendships from classes tend to be hard to extend beyond the the campus.

If you, like me, amass a collection of inspiration outside of your harddrive you may be interested in my method of keeping those magazine pages, photo stories, and drawings more organized.

You’ll Need:

• 3-ring Binder (I use a 3-inch one for more space and durability)
• 3-ring Sheet Protectors
• Sticker Labels or Index Dividers
• Magazines
• Metal Ruler
• Olfa Knife or Scissors
• Cutting Mat (if you decide to go the Olfa Knife route)
•  Optional: Paint Thinner

Start by tearing out whichever sheets you want to keep from the magazine.  Something I learned from putting together contest entries at my W Magazine internship: a few drips of paint thinner in the spine of the mag will loosen the adhesive used to bind it, the pages will come out super clean and it will dry perfectly/without any ripples.

If the pages are too big for an 8.5 x 11 sheet protector (W Magazine and Nylon are both too big!) use the metal ruler and olfa knife to make nice, clean edges (or you can use a pair of scissors).

I sort all of my pages into these categories before putting them into the sheet protectors:

• Ads
• Art
• Beauty
• Clothes/Accessories
• Covers
• Design
• Interiors
•  ”It Girls” – Models, Celebrities, Socialites, Designers I like
• Stuff to DIY
• Textual Content

After they are all in protectors, and still kept in their different categories I put them into the 3-ring binder.  I used to use index dividers:

But I found that they dont stick out past the sheet protectors.  To solve this I made DIY tabs on the sheet protectors themselves using 2 sticker labels stuck together:

(I use this same method to tab important notes in my Moleskine that I want to find again later)

It was quite a task to take all the stuff I had collected in boxes and put them into one binder but I’m glad I did.   Now it’s a lot easier to find what I’m looking for, it’s easy for other people to look through, and everything stays neat.

How do you keep your inspiration together?