INDEX

3 - Prologue4 - My Goals Competenties given at workplace5 - The Workplace (the Office)6 - ‘ ‘ (the Team)7 - The Assignments (Arte Em Segredo)8 - ‘ ‘ (Mobilidade, Seen from outside, Grandpa)9 - 11 ‘ ‘ (Formação Contínua)12 - 14 ‘ ‘ (Tocar Na Imagem)15- ‘ ‘ (Other Chores)16- The Report17- 18 Conclusion

INTERNSHIP REPORT EEF SMEETS2011 FACULDADE DE BELAS ARTES PORTO, PORTUGAL

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P R O L O G U E

After my Erasmus in Porto I felt a strong feeling of wanting to stay in Portugal. So I decided I would make this possible. This meant I had to turn down the internship that I was already accepted to do in Holland and find a new internship in Portugal within 3weeks. When asking for help at my school; Faculdade of Belas Artes in Porto they said they could offer me an internship at the school itself. It seemed like a solution from heaven because in this way I could start on the first of June (as required when wanting an erasmus intern scholar ship) and have no trouble combining it with school (which still had to be finished). And in many other ways, like accommodation, adjustment, it was a good solution because everything would stay the same.

prologue

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M Y G OA L S

Before going to my internship I decided there were a few things I wanted to learn and improve. First of all I wanted to improve my computer skills. Because as a third year student of graphic design I know they are not good enough. Especially Indesign and Illustrator should be improved. Also I wanted to improve in being less chaotic but more ordered and result oriented. With doing an internship I would expand my knowledge of the graphic design work field, or actually not expand but gain ex-perience because so far I did not have any knowledge of how the practice was. And I was curious about this. Further weak points of mine that I wanted to improve were; standing up for myself (not being afraid to say no or have an opinion that conflicts with someone else’s) and learn-ing what it is like to have some responsibility.

Before I got started I was emailed the skills that were acquired of me to be an intern there, such as a fluency in one foreign language and the ability to own initiative as well as hav-ing knowledge of the programms used by graphic designers etc. And also a list of things that I would be facing while working there. It for example said I would assist the design department with the exhibition of degree students. The preparation of exhibition-related publications as well as materials for distribu-tion. It also mentioned a few small tasks that might come my way, such as preparing the silk screens and ink for printing. The entire detailed version can be asked when interested.

C O M PE T E N T I ES G I V E N BY W O R K P L AC E

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T H E W O R K P L AC E

THE OFFICEThe office I worked in everyday was located inside the FBAUP. A small room with some tables where more or less 5people were always active. Looking outside the window there was a view of a little square, also there were 3 ‘claraboias’ (rooftop win-dows) that inspired me to make a postcard. My spot was at the same table as Marcia (the most important person of my internship), with the other people in the office I didn’t communicate so much. Marcia was the one giving me assignments and every day we discussed related issues. The job often took place outside of this office. In the print-ing technique workplace for example, where book covers and posters were printed, and many other divers things were done.

The school also owned ‘gallerias de leoes’. It is a small space for exhibitions that is used for projects of FBAUP. It actually is just one room with 3 big white walls. It is not located in the school itself but in the building of the main university of Porto. The school organizes different exhibitions there for example results from workshops, work of students and teachers or expos-ing gained works of artists. For all these events the posters and/or catalogue are designed and organized by ‘bichos da ceda’. Here I spent quite some after-noons helping with the prepara-tion of new exhibitions or the disassembly of old ones.

the workplace

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THE TEAMBichos da ceda was the name of our ‘design group’ that worked with interns commis-sioned by Graciela Machado. The group always has Marcia as kind of a ‘leader’ underneath Graciela but through the year it is always changing members because the interns come and go. When I was part of Bicho da ceda, from June till August, I mostly worked with Marcia but the first month also with an Brazilian intern, Ícaro Bione. Further I spent quite some time working at the side of the Celia Esteves, the ‘boss’ of the print-ing techniques area. Graciela Machado (vice director of the school) was technically our ‘boss’, Marcia was my supervi-sor. But because she was there every day next to me, telling me what to do it felt more like

she was my ‘boss’. Isabelle, the lady of the library, was in charges of some courses of-fered by school, I worked for her when I was designing those posters.

Photo’s starting upper right;- Célia Esteves- Márcia Novies- Graciela MachadoUnder:- ícaro Bione working in Galeria dos Leões

the workplace

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T H E A S S I N G M E N TS

The work made by ‘Bichos da Ceda’ was always made for school events. I will explain my biggest project one by one.

ARTE EM SEGREDO

When I arrived to my internship (June) they were preparing for Arte Em Segredo. Which is more than just an art exposi-tion, it is an unique and original concept. A list of names is presented, of all the artists that will exhibit, which contains both international and national well-known artist as students and teachers of FBAUP. But it will not be published which work belongs to whom. There is a list of all the names on the wall and the works are exhibit trough the gallery (without names). The works are sold for a symbolic price of 60euros.

My role was to design the cata-logue, showing all the works, and help realizing the exhibition. I was given all the pictures of the works and the text for the catalogue as well as the poster for this event. With this I made the catalogue that was later used at the opening. On the day itself I was asked to help with the preparing of the exhibition which took place in ‘Gallerias dos Leoes’.

assignments

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MOBILIDADE

The school also has a ‘museum’ on the top floor of the main building, from 15 till 28 June there was an exhibition of the international art students, my fellow erasmus students. I was asked to make a catalogue with all their works and information. Eventually it was more work to get all the information than to complete the catalogue. But I took the initiative to get all the information from the students to be in time with the catalogue.

SEEN FROM OUTSIDE

This book, designed by Mar-cia was a catalogue from an exhibition done at Faculdade de desporto. The exhibition showed art related to the subject sport. It was given to the people at the opening of the exhibition.My task was to produce the covers for this book. The cov-ers were all hand-made and therefore unique. Two pieces of wood shaped as a lightning bolt were printed first in blue, and then again in red on a paper. Later the title was printed over in silkscreen. Then it would be folded on over the book cover. This method was used on all the 500 covers and produced by me and other people who came to help eventually when we got into time trouble.

GRANDPA, WE KNOW HOW TO DO IT TOO.

For this exhibition of three Multi-media finalists I designed the catalogue. With information (and photo’s) of their work and a text of their professor and the direc-tor of school. The colours and front were based on the poster that was designed by Marcia for this exhibition.

assignments

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FORMAÇÃO CONTÍNUA

The school offers certain courses almost every month, for as well teachers, students and employees of the faculty as general public. The courses, with the information, prices etc. are presented on posters, flyers and an email. The lay-out was already decided and was used every month but with different colours and, of course, informa-tion. All I had to do was make the necessary changes for the September and October edition. For the posters, flyers and in-ternet proposal. The front of the flyer is shown here on the right.But for a few courses I was asked to make single posters, so that they were presented sepa-rately to the public. Here I could be totally free. As long as the information on the poster was clear and the poster represented the course. I started with poster for the courses; photography,

ceramic and 3-d video (which are shown on the next page, 1,2,3). I had not understood that the posters should be different from each other and I made them all in the same style. Eventually Isabelle (the woman that lead this part of the school) liked it and they were accepted.

For the next two courses though I was asked to make them in dif-ferent styles. They were, archi-tecture (next page, 6) and paint-ing. The image for pintura I drew myself (next page, 4). A problem I discovered with designing these posters, or maybe it has always been my problem but I just never noticed it before, was my balance in typography and image. I never have any trouble thinking about an image but in the end my typography is always submissive to my image, they are not harmonious. I had to find a way to make the typography as important as the image and keep the balance in the posters. Not necessarily by using size, something I am inclined to do, but by exploring other solutions. I still have to work and practise a lot with this but at least I am aware of it now.

assignments

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The last three posters I was asked to do in August. During this time there was no one in the office. I was all alone and I tried to make the posters as good as possible without any help. As with the other posters I made several versions with different images and typography so that Isabel could choose the one she preferred. I made one for a course about soap making, a Portuguese tradition (5). One for figure drawing (7) and one for a secretary course (8) where you would learn how to handle telephone conversations.

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2

assignments

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8 6

5

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TOCAR NA IMAGEM

Tocar na Imagem was an exhibi-tion made by Marcia and me under supervision of Graciela. Professor Graciela came with the idea of making an exhibition about the posters and publica-tions of the faculty. The school truly had some hidden treasures in the attic, beautiful posters starting from the ’60 as well as many publication. We were asked by Graciela to prepare everything so that it could be exhibited from August up until October. We made a selection from the great amount of post-ers, as well as from the present as the past. We chose posters that we liked or that presented very well their time or that were made by later-to–be-famous designers from the school. Than we were left with prepar-ing everything. Such as; arrang-ing a table for the gallery, getting a level, nails, hammers and the c

clips to hang to posters etc. Also we had to think about a poster to design for the exhibition. When we sat together to discuss this, some ideas came up. Marcia had brought a magazine with exam-ples of how other exhibitions were designed and Graciela had an inspiring book that she took from another exhibition in a museum. The book was sort of a guide trough the museum, it showed all the paintings as they were seen in the exhibition but illustrated only with black ink. Than it gave information about every painting. This way you could walk through the museum only with this guide book and get all the information needed. Inspired by this we came to the idea that the poster would be as well a flyer to be used in the exhibition, with all the informa-tion needed. We decided to make it as a ground plan of the room

assignments

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with the 3 walls to be folded up. On the three walls then would be seen the posters on the exact places as they would be exhibited. And on the back the information about each one. This way, in the exhibit room itself, there would be no further information needed so all atten-tion could go to the posters. The front of the poster (with the little posters on the side of it) would be printed in silk screen, and the back digitally. Marcia designed the front of the poster while I was given the task to make the illustrations. For each poster I took what I thought was the most important element to make it recognizable. We could not finish the final poster before the opening so we made a catalogue that could help you find the right information with the exhibited posters. We spent 3 days before the opening in the gallery.

Thinking about where to hang which posters and hanging them in a precise way. We also placed a table in the middle that showed some books and catalogues pro-duced by the school. On the 9th of August it was opened, with the new school year students of graphic design will be taken there to see the exhibition and at the end of September it will end.

assignments

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OTHER CHORES:

As an intern I was naturally assigned to small chores such as making copies, delivering and picking up things from the copy centre, printing things, prepar-ing exhibitions. But even though they are just small chores, some of them have been useful ex-ercises. For example I am now fully comfortable with the whole silk screen printing process. I can prepare the screen, make the prints and clean the screen again without any help. It has also been very interesting to see how an exhibition comes to live. To be there in the morning when everything looks like a mess, spending the whole day cleaning, putting the works and preparing so that in the evening everything is ready for the open-ing. I helped at Arte Em Seg-redo, Grandpa, we know how to do it too and the exhibition of the school finalists. And with ‘tocar

na imagem’ I saw the full pro-cess because it was just me and MArcia arranging everything.I also worked in the shop of school one day, where prints, books, postcards and other stuff are being sold. These kind of assignments made the intern-ship very divers. There were just a few small chores that where really boring, like scraping vinyl letters from a wall or waiting 5minutes for every poster to be printed. Whenever there was nothing to do though, this hap-pened some times (when the plotter broke or when I finished something and they not yet had found a new thing for me to do) I kept myself busy with thinking about a concept for this report.

assignments

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Portugal has many beautiful traditions. One of my personal favourites are the ‘lenço dos Namorados’. These are hand-kerchiefs (in different sizes) that were hand stitched by girls from the villages. They wrote little poems about love on them (always full of mistakes because they didn’t know how to write) and gave them to their lovers when they would go to war, or on Sunday before church to declare their love to a boy. The style of these ‘handkerchiefs of lovers’ spoke to me immediately. For this report I made anenvelope in this style, hand stitched and with grammar er-rors. In the style of the ‘Lenço dos Namorados’ but in my own way. The envelope represents me being away from home, because whenever I’m away from home I sent a lot of post back to my friends and family.

For example in my seven months in Portugal I approximately sent 30 pieces of post. The report itself I wanted to make in the form of a map. A map is always my best friend when I’m some-where new. But that gave me a lot of trouble. So I made it the best way possible to fit into the envelope. With a lot of attention to the design, typography and use of images. Eventually I think I succeeded well in giving a good impression of my internship. The reason why I wrote it in English is because I want to broaden my horzion, next summer I will move away from the Nether-lands trying to find a job abroad. Maybe in the country I fell in love with; Portugal.

T H E R E P O RTthe report

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The main thing I have learned from this internship is being open to diversity and not being scared to do things you have never done before. Many time I was asked to help with some-thing and I didn’t understand at first what they wanted of me. But instead of getting nervous I waited to see or I just asked. And at the end it was never a hard task. This all has made me into a very flexible and open work person.

Marcia had helped me a lot with learning how to use Indesign. Although I already knew the pro-gram, Marcia many times asked me “Why you don’t do it like this? Did you know this button?” and showing me easier ways. And in the end I have learned a lot more about this program, which is very important as a Graphic Designer.

I enjoyed my internship the most when they let me free to design the posters for ‘Formação Contínua’.

The entire preparation and organization of the ‘Tocar na Imagem’ exhibition was very exciting as well. I had never done anything like this and even though it was a bit stressful sometimes, the end result was very satisfying.

The down sides of my intern-ship were the times were I did not have anything to do. Even though I always found a way to keep myself busy. But it was an-noying to me that one afternoon I didn’t have anything to do while the next one I had so much to do I almost couldn’t finish before 6. Also I didn’t like to do small tasks like scraping vinyl letters from the exhibition wall, or the

filling in of new information in an already prepared lay-out. But these things had to be done, and as the lowest in the rank it was logical that it was asked of me.

Another thing I experienced as negative were my co-workers. Most of my time I worked with Marcia and to be very honest, she was not that nice. If she would have been nicer I would have gone to work every day with a lot more pleasure, that is certain. But I also discovered that I have become very mature. Would someone have been like this to me a few years ago it would have bothered me a lot. Now I just dealt with it and it didn’t get to me.

C O N C LUS I O Nconclusion

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In general it was a very educa-tive experience, personally as well as professionally. The fact that it was in a different country, with a different language and culture made it even more challenging and in the end fulfilling. I learned how to adjust myself to different kind of people and very divers assignments.

Marcia Novias about me: ‘The Eef’s internship in the office was needful, because she was always available to the work, and she was very keen in learn-ing and she could adapt to the way we work. Her posture was always correct and she made a huge effort to understand the tasks, even though she was working with portuguese people and the contents she needed to deal were written in portuguese. She is always thinking about making the projects, and she would give nice ideas to achieve a certain result. The time she was here, was really produc-tive, and I know that most of the work couldn’t be finished if she wasn’t here.From my experience, I think Eef will be a good designer, because she is very committed to work she does. Still, as a young de-signer myself, I can say that she

still has a lot to learn, specially about working with typography, but I’m truly confident that she will be able to do it.’

Graciela Machado about me: ‘It was a pleasure to have you, your fresh air was truely appreciated.’

The photo’s show the front (right) and inside of the schoolThe photo on the next page showa my favourite view

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