We have gone on several field trips, pulled all nighters, worked hard, worked together and the ultimate reward is finally here! I feel that this project has made everyone of us at least a little bit smarter and a little bit closer. Within doing this project I learned so much more about the options of buying local. I think it isn’t that people don’t want to support local farms, stores, restaurants and so on, but they don’t know how to go about doing so, or even that it was an option here in Chattanooga, at least until now.
It is finally that time! We are getting the word out about buying local. After 4 months of hard work from Crabtree farms, Leadership Chattanooga, UTC Graphic Design students and professor Leslie Jensen-Inman. The TastBuds Guide will be available to the public tomorrow at 11am. That is when the Press Release will be held at Crabtree Farms.
After months of staying busy trying to make this perfect for you, we finally did it! The TasteBuds Guide is your new way to “Savor Local Flavor” you and your buddy can pick up your guide tomorrow and find a local restaurant to go eat at, or a local farm to buy from. There are so many options to buying local, and so many different places that are here to support our local community. I am so excited to be a part of this and help spread the word about buying local.

Teamwork is an amazing thing…
I absolutely  love the fact that this project has seemed to bring our class together more. I know I am still a quiet person, but this class has really got me talking more. there is just a totally different “vibe” in the room now. It is not a bad “vibe” but a good one. I know each group has work so hard to make this project the absolute best they could and I am so proud to say that I am a part of TasteBuds. I have learned so much in this past semester and it is kind of funny because when Leslie first told me that i was in the screen group I was honestly scared. I just remember thinking oh great i am going to be the one person who lets everyone down because I know nothing about designing websites. Luckily, that has not been the case. I think that fear in failing not just myself, but my classmates and our clients has actually made me quite a bit stronger. There was nothing i could do but run full speed at the challenge. This is when it was amazing to have such a strong group. When someone had a question everyone would try to help that person out. this has truly been a great experience and it wouldn’t have been this great if we didn’t have all the amazing people helping each other out. I am not saying that it was all perfect all the time, but what do you expect, its reality!

This past Tuesday my process and materials class was able to go on another amazing field trip. This print shop is a smaller shop then the other printers like Williams and NPG. I had an amazing time; everyone that worked there seemed very nice as well. This company actually only has one full time graphic designer, during certain times they will have enough work to hire another designer for part time work. Todd was the gentleman that was graciously giving us the tour and he would stop and explain anything and everything we asked. It was obvious that he really enjoys what he does, and I feel like that alone will make a work environment 100% better from the start. We were shown the different printers and how they can add and subtract ink from the rollers. It was so amazing that they were willing to demonstrate just about anything for us.

They demonstrated there scoring and folding machines, which might sound like it is a simple task, but it saves a lot of time and money in the long run. They also had printed this long sign for a New Dentist out on hwy. 58 and they applied it to the metal backing while we were standing there. I was totally blown away with the fact that they showed us all of these different things, and let me just say I was getting so nervous for the two gentlemen that were having to apply that sign to the backing with all of us standing around staring at them. Needless to say, I could definitely see me going back to Allegra, to get projects printed.

Last Thursday (April 9^th, 2009) I had the great pleasure of meeting Cindy Li. Not only did I meet her, but I was also given the opportunity to listen to her speak twice. The day started at 8am at Green Spaces where my Professional Practice’s class met to listen to Cindy speak. From what I could tell, Cindy is a very strong individual; I strongly admire her for her self-confidence. She was able to talk to us not only once and keep everyone very engaged, but twice (formally). I have been to talks before where people will say the exact same things in both talks. Cindy is so passionate about what she does and you can tell when she is talking, it is just like a second nature and she seemed very comfortable up they’re talking to everyone.
On top of doing a talk in the morning and in the evening at Create Here, she also very graciously came back to campus and talked to my class from the time her first talk ended until around 11am. This was also very nice because it was a more comfortable atmosphere and we were able to talk to her one on one, or at least as a small group. It felt so much more personal and she has such a positive personality you can’t help to be intrigued when she was talking. You can really tell she is passionate about what she does.
After the evening talk at create here, we had more time to talk to people and getting to talk to her again, but this time I was able to talk to her briefly one on one and it just made me smile.
There were many things that really stuck out to me during her talks, one of which was when she showed a slide of how she knows people and the importance one person can have on your life. It one of those things, where you might be sitting wondering of why someone was brought into your life, but then you start thinking and realize if this one negative person hadn’t been introduced to you, you might have never met these 5 amazing people.
I also love the fact that she loves food, and taking pictures of it. I used to take pictures of my food and other random things and a lot of my friends in middle and high school would teas me about it. This definitely made me want to pick-up my old habit of taking more pictures.
On top of all this, your avatar… It is very important to keep it recognizable and not to change it constantly. People tend to be very visual and it will make it harder for someone to find you if you are constantly changing your picture. This is just a very brief introduction to some of what she talked about and how i felt about what she was saying.

Thank you so much Cindy for taking the time out to come visit and share your knowledge with us, it was and is greatly appreciated.

Not time like crunch time… luckily we are just about done. We have a few things here and there to fix, but for the most part the website is done. There are a few things that need to be tweaked with the PowerPoint and Megan is just about done with the mass email. I am SO excited. Friday April 17^th at 11am is when the press release is taking place; It will be held at Crabtree farms. This will be the first time the TasteBuds guide is available to the public to not only see, but also to take! Don’t miss it! I am so excited to see everything actually happen. It makes me want to sit back and just think what an amazing experience this has been. I am so excited, but so nervous at the same time. I just can believe the time is actually here. Don’t forget, this Friday, April 17^th at Crabtree Farms, 11am sharp! Hope to see you there!

WOW! what an experience. I have driven by NPG at least 4 times a week for the past three and a half years and never realized all the stuff that was printed there. Not only are they willing to work with small businesses, but they also have a lot of very large and well know clients, some of which are Lowes, Walmart and Target to name a few. NPG has two different locations, one handles all the digital prints where as the other handles basically everything else. Everyone was very kind and willing to answer any questions. We were also taken into the room where a lot of the signs are, so we were able to look at the different folds and packaging examples. one thing they were telling us is how important it is to make sure the sign is appealing and easy to set up. Most store employees do not want to spend 20 minutes trying to get a sign up, if you make the sign easy to set up they will be less likely to throw it away. also, making it collapsable is also very important because it will allow there to be a savings in cost and make it more appealing to the client. Everything was amazing and I could have stayed there several more hours. They let us stay there for almost three hours and we actually never even made it to the digital print location, but as we were about to head out they invited us back to come to the digital print location. I can’t wait to see it!

The website for TaseteBuds is quickly developing. This past week we really had to crack down and make sure to get the website as close to done as possible. At first when designing the website we were going to use a solid color on the sides of the template, but realized that, that was not going to work. We ended up getting the leaf from the logo and duplicating it SEVERAL times and making it really small so that the green color is still there on the sides, but it is not so strong and harsh, it wakes you want to turn away from the website. Everyone has been working so hard, not only our group, but every group. I am so proud of our class for stepping up and working the long hours when needed to get the stuff done. For the screen group, we were able to communicate over phone or email if we had a question, but some of the groups, like the print group are not always that luckily. It is important for them to be there as a group checking, making sure everything is right and not just trust the print shop, even though they are awesome! We are working with clients, so we must verify everything. At this point, the website is almost finished, Megan has diligently been working on the mass email coding and Melinda is working on the PowerPoint layout. It is so exciting because everything is really starting to come together.

Well, my book is about done, it actually was done, but then I decided to change my covers, title page and index page. The problem I seemed to be having was I had this one idea stuck in my head that I was determined to make-work. I finally got it to look similar to what I had pictured, the problem was that I didn’t enjoy it as much once I actually saw it. At this point of the game, I have completed my covers and am just working to try to figure out a successful, and simplistic way of fitting my title page and index page in with the cover, but I do not want to use a full bleed image like I did for the cover. I am thinking what I am going to do is just use a portion of the picture for those two pages. The critiques we had for this project helped because at first I was thinking everything had to be legible, and once I found out that was not the case, I was really able to play with they layout.
Overall I am very excited about putting this book together, and can’t wait to see the final product. I have only had the chance to make one other book so far, and that was over a year ago. It is always exciting and rewarding to get a new project done and be able to show other people, besides my classmates.

TasteBuds is really coming along and the deadline is not too far off. Now that we are back from Spring Break it is kind of a reality check on how quick the deadline really is approaching. Luckily my team is working really well together and we actually noticed before spring break that we were really going to have to step it up another notch. We decided to break up and work one everything at once. Lauren and myself worked together on the Website. Melinda worked on the PowerPoint presentation, and Megan worked on the coding for the mass email. Even though we broke our group up, we were still always working at the same time, so we were able to give each other feedback as needed. Sometimes it is good to get a fresh set of eyes on something you have been staring at for several hours.
Right now with the website, we have been looking at a lot of different sites, trying to figure out what does and does not work and just trying to get the basics done. We want to come up with some type of “master” copy for the web site. So far we know that we want the tool bar towards the top of the screen, so we know that will be on every page. It is good to have some since of stability throughout the site. It is not a good idea for the different links to look so different that it makes people wonder if they are still on the right site. Needles to say, it is coming along!

At this point I was really working on just getting started with this project. I am designing 2 inside pages, and they must be able to live on either the right or left side of the book we are making in my Process and Materials class. I am also designing a front and back cover, a title page, and a table on content. With this project, everyone in my class was given two printers to research and we were also given two words from an earlier stage of this project. We were to use the word and images we had taken to represent those words and make each page represent one of those words. We also had each of the printers we were assigned information on one of the pages. For example one of my words was strong, I had a picture of a rope and then one of my printers was Sign Rite. All that information would be in one page with the information on the print shop, such as there name, phone number, email, website, what they specialize in and more. So each printer is given a full page and once it is compiled, everyone in the class will have information to several different printers.
The way this will work is everyone in the class will have the same thing on the inside and we will each have our own covers, title page and index in the book.
At this point, I am trying to make some covers that do mot resemble what I have in mind for my pages, this way it is not as obvious to whom did what right off the bat! So far this has been a fun and as always stressful project!