new to bamboo

an account of my adventures this summer as i experience intern life at bamboo creative.

[kelseygracebond]

ooops...have not blogged

since last wednesday code has been happening. garrett took some time to get eric and i started up on git hub (version control software) and bootstrap (collection of tools to make web design a bit easier).

we used these new programs to start wireframing. we took our initial sketches and ideapaint wall ideas and turned them into in browser wireframes. we created a home page (featuring events) and an internal page that all the pages' structure will follow.

these wireframes were at an extremely basic level. we used a gray scale and boxes. no fonts. no colors. no images. we wanted them to focus on the structure of their site rather than focusing in on small details. removing those small details allowed our client to evaluate the wireframes for what they were, structure. they loved it and they had some great input and valuable ideas that we will incorporate. 

our meeting today consisted of presenting the wireframes, social campaigns and a mood board. we gave them a broad spectrum of everything and then provided specific examples so they could get the feel for our ideas.

they were engaged and very responsive to everything we discussed. and they are looking forward to what we do next; website.

[kelseygracebond]

a lot of things wednesday

there was a lot of things that went on today.

started the day with some research of local church websites...wow. its scary out there. eric and i put together some quick web tips that will help everyone. one of the worst examples...

information is everywhere, typography is terrible and there is an all around confusion that makes me not even want to be there. 

next task of the day, talk with cj and PIZZA! aside from the fact that i got free pizza for lunch cj had some great advice and tips for life in the professional world. i also found myself applying them to real life. 

the idea that everyone has a frame. the idea that frames collide. there is a frame battle between professionals. basically figuring out who has control. how to gain that control; taking back the frame. huge insights that i know are going to help with professional life.

next was sketching. us design peoples took over an ideapaint wall to throw up some sketches for wire framing. our next order of business is to create in-browser, responsive wireframes to show our client at our next meeting; along with social and physical campaign ideas. 

[kelseygracebond]

monday monday

getting more into web-ee stuff. starting the discussion of layout and design stuff. creating a site map to aid us in layout and organization of information.

“What separates design from art is that design is meant to be... functional.” ― Cameron Moll

stated very well. this process of discussion/sketching is a huge part of building a website. you need everything inline structurally before you can jump into design and code. websites are for the user, so user experience is key. 

[kelseygracebond]

code friday

for whatever reason my fridays are usually less busy than my other days. and since i've been itching all week to dive into some code i decided that would be a great way to spend the day. after some inspiration research this morning, i coded. i coded out some ideas that us designers have discussed would be a good idea for stand out talent's new website. this was a good way for us to get a visual of some of our inspiration put together. we still have a ton of decisions to make before we start coding the real new website, but this was a good exercise to help keep my brain active in the languages.

the branding process is something completely new to me and has overwhelmed my brain for the last couple of weeks. this is not a bad thing, it is absolutely necessary for our client and has gone great and i loved being a part of putting it together. but i love coding so it was nice to spend the day doing something i know im good at. 

happy friday all.

[kelseygracebond]

interview thursday

today was spent interviewing people involved with stand out talent at different levels. the purpose of this was to help identify some things about them that us booterns cannot see.

we interviewed two women one being a mother of an actor and one being a mother of an actor, an actor herself and volunteer. the insights we were given were pretty much inline with what we have learned through our research and discussions with stand out talent. 

our interviewees were very open and helped us dig deeper into what and why stand out talent does what they do.

the rest of the day was spent doing some WEB STUFF! yay. we delved into auditing their website, analyzing their organization, content and images and then figuring out what works and what doesn't. we put together this...

which is a site map. this helps us organize the navigation and the content that we want inside each page. very helpful.

after that we picked apart alle and melissas brains to figure out what stand out talent's call to action is and how they would be driven to do that. again very helpful. 

feeling better about the "lets make a website from scratch!" process.

[kelseygracebond]

success wednesday

today, we presented our client with the brand brief, it was a huge success. 

that is all.

[kelseygracebond]

@tiney007 im making this for you! #zucchinicake #creamcheesefrosting #chefkelsey #happymonday

[kelseygracebond]

target monday

with the beginning of the week, we wasted no time in getting started on finishing this brand brief. we got our target audience nailed out quickly! there was definitely some fun had today in choosing these photos and their names. meet zach watters, 23, the weirdo (actor).

target audience was tricky because they have such a range; actors, volunteers, community members, elderly, parents of actors. we separated them into internal and external involvement and created a persona for each that we can now use throughout the rest of the project. what a great process to work through; the brand brief.

with the latter half of the afternoon, eric, tony and i took inventory of the website. we wrote out all their current pages and analyzed based on the needs of their users how to best organize stand out talent's information.

happy monday!

[kelseygracebond]

wireframe friday

today i spent a lot of time playing around in illustrator with layout ideas for stand out talent. the image below is my latest idea and my favorite layout of the day.

now keep in mind this is just me playing around and these wireframes will change when eric, tony and i collaborate on layout ideas. today was more of a personal mental exercise to keep me thinking web-ee during the brand brief time. and who knows maybe my ideas will help with future web projects and/or maybe even stand out talent's web redesign. 

i am also in the process of setting up some interview times with volunteers, parents and/or participants of the theater to gain an insight form all involved. these interviews will help us when we start the 'target audience' and 'value proposition' sections of our brand brief.

things are moving along.

[kelseygracebond]

collaboration thursday

we have been working on our brand brief all week and are still not done yet! today we spent pretty much the whole day working on the 'positioning' 'core purpose' and 'big idea' sections of our brand brief. 

collaboration was definitely the theme of the day, not only within our bootern team but also with ginny. she was a huge help today in making us channel our thoughts and energies into finishing these few sections. we had a ton of great ideas, phrases and words that we were able to turn into perfect captions for stand out talent's brand. 

this process is long and laborious (mentally) but it is going to be extremely valuable both now and long term. when we finally have the finished brand brief, it will be the grounds for all further decision making; for us booterns and also for stand out talent after we leave.

great goodies to store in my brain collection.

[kelseygracebond]

values wednesday.

we hit the ground running today... we wasted absolutely no time getting started today. as soon as all of us were in the office we got right down to business. we spent all morning discussing stand out talent's core values... that a lot harder than it sounds. using our notes form our ideapaint wall and our brains we began to create short phrases. after some time in the office, we re-located to starbucks then back to the office. for some reason, today we moved around the office a ton. ping pong table to couches to actual table, needless to say i got in my exercise. anyways, with all that physical exercise we managed to exercise our brains as well and we came up with these

to cultivate excellence

to encounter truth together

these would be called 'core values' 

which essentially describes what the organization does on a high level. what they exist to do. those two short phrases took us half the morning to come up with. the other half of the morning we spent coming up with stand out talent's BHAG's (big hairy audacious goal)

be the entertainment hub of the community

to reach all audiences consistently

to equip those who aspire, with excellence

the BHAG's are important for the organization to keep in check with their big dreams of why they are doing what they do.

after lunch we had an insightful chat with garrett about why the internet? and how the internet? why? because the internet is a people connecter. how? by designing for the user first. my big take away from this was to consider what you are doing when you are designing. dont let anything be arbitrary. consider every experience that the user is going to encounter; aesthetically and technically. 

more goodies to add to my brain collection. 

[kelseygracebond]

another wordpress day monday

this is where my brain was most of the day...

i started the day and actually spent most of my day furthering my knowledge of wordpress. i have very limited knowledge of how to create a custom theme and i want to feel, entirely as i can, prepared when it comes time to start building stand out talents website. having the knowledge prior to designing the website will allow us designers to know exactly what we are capable of doing. this way we can stay in check with what is realistic in our short time frame. 

having been wrapped up in tutorials all morning and even into after lunch i and the rest of the team, completely forgot about our massive ideapaint wall with all our brainstormed ideas and nuggets which we are to turn into a brand brief. we took the latter half of the afternoon to begin that process, which to my surprise is taking SO much longer that i imagined. there is so much thought and discussion that goes into writing this thing accordingly to fit the organization and their core purpose as a theater. and with a five person team there is definitely some debate, not bad, about what we should say for what. 

overall today was very productive. personally and team wise.

[kelseygracebond]

wordpress friday

title speaks for itself. ive been spending my day working with wordpress and learning/implementing skills. my knowledge of wordpress is not fantastic so i am trying to expand it. this way when it is time to make stand out talent's new website i am not totally and completely lost, only a little lost.

tutorials. exploration. all day long. semi success.

aside from that tony and i have been collaborating about some website ideas and researching competitors websites. we are trying to create something that is intuitive to users but also something that will set them apart from their competition. 

[kelseygracebond]

happy friday all.

oh yeah this is me in monster form...

[kelseygracebond]

Integrity is acknowledging there is something greater.

Jason Bortz

[kelseygracebond]

organize it thursday

we started the day off with a two hour meeting with tony and eric to catch them up on the meeting notes from yesterday. a three and a half hour meeting with the client regurgitated into two hours...thats a lot of information...

by then we needed a break so to starbucks it was! 

anywhos, after an extraordinarily productive and informative meeting with our client yesterday us booterns were left with A TON of gold mines and knowledge nuggets that we can use in stand out talent's re-brand. 

today we took this...(my notes)

  everyone else's notes and everyones brain power (after having caught eric and tony up) and organized it into this...

just to provide a scale for this thing, we had to use a step ladder to reach the top... (this is an entire wall that is covered in idea paint, essentially a gigantic white board)

this is our process ---->  http://instagram.com/p/bpAIcmGG8w/

with the help of ginny we turned pages and pages and pages and pages of notes into a semi organized wall with the important facts, topics and brain nuggets. just some of them...

their core values: PASSION INTEGRITY WONDER

redemptive themes

inspire joyful telling of the truth

if there weren't obstacles he (our client, jason) wouldn't do it

excellence in training and production of the performance and media arts

community awareness

after basically throwing everything up on a wall and walking away we started to talk briefly about the process of writing the brand brief. which is basically the white board wall of information presented clearly to the client. this is also something that the client keeps and can use for future reference when expanding or sharing what they do with others. its kind of a big deal...

approaching the end of our brainstorming session, and for that matter the close end of the day, i was feeling my brain begin to shut down. thankfully we decided to let it breathe, just like wine. we are going to come back on monday as a team with fresh minds and perspectives to begin to put together stand out talents brand brief.

[kelseygracebond]

woah wednesday.

today was an extremely productive and insightful day, in so many ways. we dug deep into our clients' brain to find the what, how, and why of the business. in the process we gathered so much valuable nuggets of information that i know we can turn into a great new brand for stand out talent.

the amount of passion and appreciation our client had for what they do makes our entire team completely ecstatic to continue to work with them. we seriously could not have picked a more perfect client. they kinda fell into our laps and we couldn't be more grateful. 

this project is continuing to surprise me and im sure the rest of the team as we are continuing on. i know that we are going to get so much out of this experience. we are going to encounter challenges that will be tough to overcome and we are going to encounter things that just seem to simple to be true. like today our client was so open and honest with his answers; it totally caught us off guard, in a great way. 

we definitely have a great client.