Jenna Escobar is the latest SPM student to receive a co-op outside of the United States. During the summer, she will be on co-op with Schön!, a fashion magazine based out of London, England.

Originally from California, Jenna was an active member of her school’s yearbook and was always intrigued by design. Jenna came to RIT after the recommendation of a teacher and alumni from California Polytechnic State University. Following her passion for design and typography, Jenna “loved the change from California to Rochester.” This is part of the reason she is excited to live in London for her co-op — she is comfortable with new and unfamiliar places.

Jenna also has traveled to Europe before, and it influenced her desire to co-op abroad. She began her search while attending RIT, and found the Global Experiences program. After interviewing and getting accepted into the program, they looked for co-ops that matched her interests and talent. They then found and set up a meeting with Schön magazine. Jenna will be working for Schön! for eight weeks, doing layout design for their printed piece. She also hopes to contribute to their app edition, a fairly new endeavor for the magazine.

Jenna has been taking more imaging classes in preparation for the co-op, and has begun locating friends who will be in the area during the summer. Additionally, she has been researching similar magazines to get a better feel for the environment she will be entering. She will begin in early June, and live in an apartment complex with other interns in the heart of London.

Jenna is trying not to expect too much and is planning on going there with a positive attitude and an open mind. This is a once in a lifetime experience and an excellent opportunity. We can’t wait to hear back from her in the fall and learn all about her experiences!

“In spring and summer last year, I had the opportunity to intern with Heidelberg’s world headquarters in Germany. As a printing industry student from the United States, this was a unique experience. From my internship, I would like to share with you my experiences in product management, what I learned along the way, and my insights on emerging technology and processes for printers to guarantee their future.

My desk was located in the Heidelberg Print Media Academy, an 11-story glass building that is completely out of the ordinary. Within the building are two 50-meter towers containing meeting rooms that cleverly represent the cylinders on a printing press. In the basement there is a dome-shaped red auditorium that rests in a pool of water, depicting the ink and water elements of offset printing. Located right outside the building is the S-Printing Horse, Heidelberg’s 90- metric ton, 13-meter-high sculpture. The horse is made of stainless steel and represents parts of a printing press and the overall printing process.

My four-and-a-half months were spent in Prinect product management, Heidelberg’s integrated workflow solution. I was involved in a wide variety of projects — assisting in the launch and interviews of a Prinect ROI study, conducting competition analysis and market reports in MIS, Web-to-Print, and developing Prinect software upgrade modules to assist the sales force worldwide. One of my favorite projects involved managing a social media study to more effectively market and increase visibility of Prinect products.

The Heidelberg facilities and manufacturing sites that I was able to spend time in are highly-charged places as there are numerous activities going on each day. In the city of Heidelberg is the world’s largest print demonstration facility, showcasing the entire portfolio of products. Each day, outside the facility, they raise flags representing the countries of the customers from around the world who are visiting on that particular day.

Nine miles from Heidelberg, Wiesloch is home to Heidelberg’s largest and most modern printing press factory in the world. This is where production, assembly and international shipment of all sheetfed offset printing presses take place. I visited this location on several occasions for customer events.

During my short stint at Heidelberg, I was able to gain an insight into the current printing industry trends. I believe investing in a Job Definition Format (JDF) compliant workflow is a key area for companies to introduce process automation and increase shop floor efficiency. Being able to visit Prinect customers throughout Germany made it clear that this technology is essential in gaining a quick ROI and unlocking a shop’s full optimization potential.
Looking at the digital shift in the industry, we are now seeing an increase in offset companies investing in digital equipment. Offering combined print services requires workflow integration of the two distinct processes. With JDF technology, companies now have a solution to efficiently operate under a “hybrid” workflow.

Another trending business model with huge potential is Web-to-Print (W2P). Each year, greater volumes of print are being ordered online, creating an excellent opportunity for printers to offer online services. By 2014, InfoTrends predicts that US$31 billion of the anticipated US$107 billion in commercial printing revenues will be submitted through a W2P system. The Internet, it appears, continually rewrites how printing companies produce work, and we are seeing print buyers now looking for additional tools to fulfill their printing needs.

Consulting was another service that caught my attention. This is an area which I feel many companies are in need of. Achieving operation efficiency through lean manufacturing is a critical area printers need to focus on. By doing more with less, it opens up the ability of improving efficiency, reducing costs and maximizing profits. With a competitive marketplace and tough economy, achieving operational efficiency is a worthwhile investment to surviving and operating in the future.

I came away from my internship with the understanding that our industry is changing at a rapid pace. I believe that printers today, more than ever, need to find innovative business models to continually serve customers along with increasing operational efficiency through workflow optimization. Heidelberg employees have to understand the current and forecasted trends, master the product/services they are working with, and fully understand their customers’ current situations and future needs. I’ve seen first hand how the German culture helped Heidelberg develop into a world-renowned company. The people in the company have a strong passion for print and are among the most focused colleagues I have worked with.

This international experience has allowed me to grow as an individual. Being exposed to a new culture has helped me open up my mind to a different way of life, and new ideas and philosophies. This experience has also shaped my personal career goals and interests. After I graduate from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Spring next year, I plan on using the knowledge I had gained from this stint in Heidelberg in my printing career.”

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Introduction to Type Design was a ten-week, fast-paced course covering the basics of creating a typeface. Students were required to have previously attended Lorrie Frear’s Calligraphy course in the fall, so they would have a base knowledge of italic calligraphy for their typeface designs. This year however, she let people start their design from whatever style they wanted. This resulted in incredible diversity in the designs that came out of the class, including a typeface from brush Japanese calligraphy, one from brush Chinese calligraphy, and one from blackletter.

The diversity of students and projects in the class made for fun and interesting critiques. Zoe Herman, a third year Graphic Design student, stated that the inspiration for her typeface “Wynter Wheat” was Georgia Italic, with “a couple of extra pieces of pie, and a dash of 50′s flare.” Meanwhile, John Albertini, a professor who teaches writing courses at NTID, drew his inspiration for “Monastery” from a reproduction of a 9th century manuscript (Glosses in old High-German, Reichenau fragments), and a modern Carolingian script developed by Sheila Waters.

Alex Atzl, a fourth year New Media Publishing student, loved being able to speak one-on-one with Kris to get design feedback on the challenge of ensuring the letters are “legible yet visually pleasing.” She also said “I’ve wanted to take it since last year. I love typography, and I’m honestly fascinated by the design of letterforms.”

Fourth year Fine Art Photography major Fumi Ishino originally took the class because he was interested in Western Calligraphy and wanted to compare Western and Eastern typefaces. However, the class was such a good experience for him that he recommends this class to everyone. “Even people that are photo majors. It is beneficial to be a better artist no matter what your field is.” Zoe also addressed some concerns print media students may have about diving into a design-heavy course: “We have a few Print Media students that are doing really well and bring a different angle to critiques. They are able to look at things in a more logical, left-brain way that design and other art students sometimes can’t.”

In the end, students are able to come away with a beautiful, working typeface with all the lowercase letters and a whole lot of knowledge about type design. As a student who hasn’t used Illustrator that often, it was also a great opportunity to have a crash course in learning the software. Professor Holmes encouraged everyone in the class to design uppercase letters, numbers, and glyphs after the class was over.

Zoe also had some parting words of advice for students who want to take the class in the future: “It’s important not to get discouraged. When you create something different, that doesn’t really fit in, it might just be the thing that provides comedic relief and gets you power-housing your way through the next 5 letters.”

For more information, videos and images on Introduction to Type Design, please visit Kris Holmes’ blog here.

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Arianna is originally from Utica, New York, two hours east of Rochester, which she described as a very similar environment and culture to Rochester, though she prefers Rochester because there’s more to see and do. She’s always been interested in fashion, graphic design, and photography, and had fine art training since she was five.

When initially searching for colleges, Arianna looked at a lot of art schools in New York State with graphic design and photography programs such as Syracuse, the School of Visual Arts, and a few universities in and around New York City, but when she visited them she didn’t really feel comfortable. A photography teacher from her high school recommended that she look into RIT. When she toured RIT, she fell in love with the photography program and liked that she could change her major if she really wanted to. Another advantage RIT had over other schools are the programs that were developed to work with students for career placement.

Her undergraduate degree at RIT was in Visual Media, which she described as a mix of photography, design, and printing. She grew more interested in printing, so after graduating she came back to RIT for their technically-oriented Print Media MS program. She felt that understanding printing was valuable for her as a photographer. She feels that designers, photographers, and artists who work with print media should learn about print, even at an entry level, in order to understand how their images are reproduced.

After graduating, she’ll be working at a co-op at Hammer Packaging, a printing and packaging firm in Rochester, New York, in their testing lab. Afterward, she’s hoping to work for a small magazine or  publisher as a consultant who smooths communications between designers, clients, and printers. However, her dream job would be to work within the digitally printed textiles market. She says the market is currently growing and creating more job opportunities.

Arianna advises incoming students that studying is much more important in college, but it’s better to spend ten minutes a day reviewing each class’s notes rather than cramming before the test! She also recommends that current students should seek opportunities offered by the school and shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions.

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The way we interact with and view the world around us has already shifted thanks to the introduction of tablets to the mainstream market. Publications have naturally shifted their focus to this new distribution platform, favoring the quick and efficient method of releasing their content. With this change in the industry, academia must follow, preparing their students for the world they will enter in a few short years.

Over the past three months, the School of Print Media (SPM) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has been using QuarkXPress® with App Studio for two courses, testing its capabilities as a new means to construct iPad App publications. This enables students and faculty to learn new skills in writing, designing, and planning for the user experience beyond the traditional print model. Erich Lehman, Premedia Facilities Coordinator for the school, explains, “It (user interface design) is really building on what you already subconsciously were aware of; what you’ve interacted with your whole life, but never gave much thought to. These classes give the students a chance to learn and understand both sides of this crucial element of tablet publishing.” It’s a lot like good typography: when the user experience is well-designed, you’ll never notice. However, you can spot a bad experience without knowing what’s actually wrong.

The two courses that focused on tablet publishing are Typography Research and Cross Media Workflow, which utilize App Studio and QuarkXPress® in different ways. Typography Research, taught by professors Charles Bigelow and Christine Heusner, analyzes the new dynamic reading experience including page layout, typeface readability, and content interaction on the tablet. Student research topics include kinetic typography, interactive album publications, and tablet sustainability. Professor Bigelow said, “ As the magazine industry migrates to publications on electronic platforms like the iPad, we thought it was vital to include electronic pad publishing.” Cross Media Workflow approaches the tablet as a marketing distribution channel, and demonstrates how to use the new medium to deliver content in an integrated marketing campaign for SPM.

RIT’s chapter of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts (TAGA) has also undertaken app development using QuarkXPress® and App Studio. For the TAGA conference, an annual competition between international graphic communication institutions, the student TAGA chapters submit a full production book of professional research. This year marks the first year that RIT TAGA will bring an interactive tablet edition to a traditionally print-centric event. Creating the 100+ page journal through QuarkXPress® allowed the designers to step outside the world of static media to experiment with 3D modeling, video production, slideshows, and affordance.  TAGA Designer Rachel Gelb elaborates saying, “I’m excited to be able to create something that can be used on multiple devices. We are so used to designing for one distribution method, and now we have something that can be accessed digitally wherever we go.” This year’s project became a true cross-media project; creating the publication app while also producing a traditional print journal.

As a student of both classes and the project manager of TAGA, I find myself in the middle of SPM’s whirlwind of adaption to the new platform and software. I consider myself incredibly lucky to experience this technology before entering the “real world.” Professors and students alike were learning as they went and, like anything new, there was certainly a learning curve. According to Professor Bigelow, digital platforms increase the need for designers to learn more technical skills and acquire more knowledge. The gap between art and technology is shrinking every day.

As we work with new technology, it’s not unusual for a professor to not have an immediate answer to a question in class, instead having to research the answer and respond at a later date, or encourage the students to assist each other. We all work together to tackle these new challenges. This creates a much more organic and hands-on learning experience instead of the typical lecture and “How To” lab assignments. If we are going to succeed, we are going to do it together. In that regard, I enjoy the classes much more because I appreciated the collaborative learning process. Professor Bigelow explains further. “There are various hardware and software issues and puzzles to be resolved, often by trial and error, and whatever is learned by the teachers must be reframed to be teachable to the students.” Such is the price of being on the bleeding edge of technology.

Over time, I think tablets will become robust enough that they will substitute our desktop and laptop computers for basic computer processing. For now, they don’t have the capability to handle everything that a creative professional or student needs. Mr. Lehman says there is an exponential learning curve in this adaption and, “it will still be a while for an affordable tablet that can do everything we need it to do, with the horsepower to process our files.” However, the industry is ready. “A lot of us were already there conceptually,” he continues, “[Cross-media] is not a new concept. We just now have the tools we were dreaming of.”

I think the School of Print Media’s first pass at tablet education is a noble one, and a fairly comprehensive introduction to the curriculum. Over time, it will become more immersed as tablets gain more importance throughout the industry. That RIT is already teaching app development, publication, et cetera, is a huge benefit to its students. With every update released by software companies like Quark, programs will become more intuitive and approachable, and more acceptable for commercial consumption. The future is approaching rapidly, and adjusting is just a part of the game. As long we are willing to change with the technology, this will be an exciting time in publishing, and revolutionary in the world of communication.

Complimentary breakfast and lunch are provided, as well as door prizes.

Register online at http://cias.rit.edu/~gravure/gravure/gravure_day.html

To read about last year’s Gravure Day, visit here.

But that didn’t stop him from delivering a sidesplitting performance at RIT’s Freeze Fest 2012. Opting for more of an organic improv performance, Glover fielded questions from the audience and made it up as he went. As he commented on Rochester’s abandoned railroad, RIT’s gaming culture, and our general lifestyle, it felt like Glover was having a one-on-one conversation with the entire audience.

Glover had a handful of scripted jokes, but mostly abandoned them to continue his banter with the audience. He eventually turned the comedy show into a Q&A session, and the unexpected happened; Childish Gambino was challenged to a freestyle rap battle, which he accepted. He pulled a beat boxer from the audience and had opening act DC Pierson mediate the twenty-minute spectacle. The crowd then chose a champion, with the honor going to Glover.

Overall, it was one of the most organic and comfortable comedy acts RIT has brought in the last couple of years. Glover developed an instantaneous connection with his audience, and it was solid thanks to his scripted jokes, Q&A sessions, and the rap battle.

WhatTheyThink.com is the top industry-related website for our field, featuring up-to-date industry news, data analysis, webinars, events, job postings, blogs, videos, newsletters and social media. Several of our own faculty and students have been featured on the site. Frank Romano sends out a weekly newsletter to members who are subscribed to it. SPM grad student Colby Kibbe has been featured on the site for his achievement at OnDemand with QR codes.

Take advantage of this free subscription while you can! Simply sign up for an account and use your RIT email to receive these benefits.

www.whattheythink.com

Gallery r celebrated its opening in their new location, on 100 College Avenue in downtown Rochester, in Fall 2011. On January 12, 2012, the Invitational Exhibition of CIAS faculty and students had its grand opening. SPMetc’s project from ImagineRIT 2011 was up for display, among other work from around CIAS. Casey Jabbour and Gabrielle Barandiaran made the trip downtown to see their masterpiece among others.

“Being heavily involved with the project, This is Print, it was surreal seeing a piece of our hard work hanging on the wall of an art gallery,” says Gabrielle. “Just two years ago, I resided in Austin, Texas with only the imagination of what actually attending RIT would look like. Now as a second year student, a project I had a hand in hung in an art gallery. This is something I wouldn’t have fathomed so early on in my college career. I am so thrilled to be a part of SPMetc and have the chance to work on projects as important as this.”

Kelly’s education from RIT and MVCC helped shape her future in the printing industry. MVCC introduced her to it, and RIT helped her continue to grow. At RIT, Kelly also was a member of Gamma Epsilon Tau, the Graphic Arts Fraternity on campus. Kelly stated that RIT “gave me the best opportunities I could have ever asked for.” While attending RIT, Kelly did a co-op on Queen Mary 2 as the Assistant Printer. This job consisted of running a Heidelberg Printmaster, as well as printing daily programs, newspapers, menus, etc., while aboard the ship. Her education at RIT helped prepare her for this job, since she used the same equipment she was trained on at RIT. Upon completion of her co-op, Kelly applied to be the Chief Printer with Cunard.

One of Kelly’s favorite aspects of this job is traveling the world, as well as doing a job that she loves. Kelly has always been a shy person, but working for Cunard has helped her to open up. She has had the opportunity of working with many different cultures and gaining great experience. Kelly stated she felt “as prepared as possible to go out into the real world.” While working for Cunard, she worked on all 3 ships, Queen Mary 2, Queen Victoria, and Queen Elizabeth. Kelly also has had the opportunity to visit over 40 countries including Egypt, Israel, Russia and South Africa.

Kelly advises students who are looking for a co-op to find a job that they love and will make them happy. On a job search, she strongly suggests to not “settle for anything less than what you want.” Kelly believes that co-ops are great learning experiences, which can turn into future jobs. Although some co-ops are competitive, Kelly says, “RIT will really prepare you for when you do get a co-op or job.”