Thursday, May 29, 2008

Hey Lost Fans!!

For all of you who greedily watched the finale for Lost, you might have seen a commercial during the program that was a bit strange. The commercial was advertising an event that was being held from July 24-27 in San Diego and that they were looking for volunteers to be recruited for various positions. The video goes on to say that it is unpaid. The commercial was so strange, I decided to look it up. My suspicions were correct as it says on the website that all of this is on behalf of the Dharma Initiative! For those interested in being recruited, you can submit your e-mail and you will be contacted by a recruitment officer. I submitted mine but I have not received anything yet but I will keep you posted. If you're interested in going to the website, it is at www.octagonrecruiting.com. I have also posted the commercial below for anyone who missed it.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Where do we go from here?

For those of you who are either attending college or who are planning to attend college, do not make the unfortunate mistake of doing what I did which is majoring in something that doesn't move directly into a job. Job hunting sucks. My major was in Communication and Journalism with a focus in Advertising and unfortunately, there are not any advertising positions in Albuquerque that need to be filled. So it has put me in a bit of a strange position because I'm not sure what else I can do. I know I can fill any business-oriented position but where? For whom? Doing what? About a week ago, I told my sister that there was a job posting for people who sell office machines like printers and fax machines to other businesses. When I told her this, she scrunched up her face and said, "Eww...you don't want to do that!" I replied that I wanted to do anything that was going to make money, but after I thought about it some more, I realized that I really didn't want to do that and that she was right. I have spent many hours on CareerBuilder.com in the past few weeks, just looking at all the jobs, trying to figure out which ones I'm qualified for and which ones I'm not and thinking that the ones I'm not qualified for sound a whole hell of a lot better than the ones that I am. All I know is that I need to get out of my current job. It was about 90 degrees outside today and since I basically work outside (I work in a kind of warehouse with large garage doors open on both sides) I was absolutely miserable. Its time for my college degree to start working for me since I am finished working for it. But I'm not sure what to do. I am glad however, that my wife and I aren't desperate for money because who knows when I'm going to figure it out.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

My Own Memoir

He tried, and tried, and tried.

Page 161 Quote

I'm currently reading the Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and since it doesn't ever reach page 161 (the book is really short) I decided to quote from page 61.

"The story of the flying money was true. And all about that neighborhood, even from the august London and Country Banking Company, from the tills of shops and inns-doors standing that sunny weather entirely open-money had been quietly and dexterously making off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of men. And it had, though no man had traced it, invariably ended its mysterious flight in the pocket of that agitated gentleman in the obsolete silk hat, sitting outside the little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe."

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Mag Ads That Will Never Be Published




Yesterday, I finished my advanced graphic design class that I had been taking. I turned in a huge project where we could pick any client and redesign their logo and packaging (for one of their products) and create three magazine ads for them. I picked the rock band Kings of Leon. I was so proud of the project I thought I'd share it with you. The logo wasn't supposed to look how it looks. There is a stupid white box around it and both my professor and I couldn't figure out why. So use your imagination and think of the album at the bottom of the ads, with just the black part of the logo. My idea was to put thought provoking images with lyrics from the bands album. I had not originally planned to do them in black and white, but after doing the first one I thought it looked really good and it made the album stand out more. I'm proud of it because it turned out ten times better than I thought it would. I plan to send the band these and tell them why I did them.
P.S. If you can't see them too well, click on the image and it should bring it up bigger.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

One Down (and it should feel better than it does)

If you've been wondering why I haven't blogged in awhile, its because I've been in Advertising Campaigns hell. Since my degree is in Advertising, Advertising Campaigns is the capstone course for my major. The course was designed so that the students felt like they were in an actual advertising agency. On the first day of class, we were put into the groups that we would be in for the entire semester, we were given an actual client, and we were immediately put to work. Our client was Super Estrella, which is a Spanish/English radio station thats based in L.A. but has a branch in Albuquerque. They play approximately 75% Spanish pop songs, and 25% English pop hits. The client came in and talked to us about their company and about the problems they were having building clientele in the city. We built an entire campaign from top to bottom and we have been working on it all semester. Last week, we had to turn our plansbook in (which was a business plan that discussed every aspect of our campaign-ours was about 30 pages-another groups was 60 pages-but they're overachievers). We had created four different billboards, and promotional items such as t-shirts, tank tops, water bottles, beer koozies, and bumper stickers. Yesterday, we gave our pitch to the client and they loved it. Just like in the real world, the client picked the pitch that they liked the best. They didn't pick us (they picked that overachieving group that I already mentioned) but they did tell us that if our professor didn't give us an A, that we should re-negotiate. Our professor grades us on his own terms (he even said that in past years, there has been groups that won the competition but did not get As in the class). But now that its over, I'm a little sad. I had far from the normal college experience. Usually when people go to college, they make lots of friends and have lots of good times. I've never really had a lot of friends in college, but this semester was different. The group that I was in was the perfect group for me. If I was in any other group, I would have gone crazy either because they worked too much (overachievers) or didn't work enough. And after working for an entire semester with these people (as well as a few really long nights-especially the night before we turned our plansbook in) we have grown really close. Knowing how things are, even if we say that we will stay in touch, I doubt we will. These are the closest friends I've had in my college, and it makes me sad that we didn't get to know each other until the last semester before we graduated. I suppose that this is a part of life but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow.
P.S. For those of you in Albuquerque, the radio station is 105.9 FM if you're interested or if you just want to make sure I'm not making it up.