Tag: internship

Everything I did at Quirk

Today is a most joyous of days. As you read this-I am walking up to receive my diploma. Well–my mock diploma–the real one will come in the mail in like a month or so. Actually, I might already be on the train. Depends on when you read this. And I might not have walked if the ceremony was taking too long but I digress.

Getting my MA has been such an exhausting journey but here I am at the end. During my time at Rowan, I helped to charter three clubs: Gaming Club, Archery Team, and Writing Arts Club; I helped my friends and fellow students with their undergraduate portfolios; I worked hard and graduated Magna Cum Laude for both Undergrad and Grad; I came out alive on the other end of a lot of drama; I got engaged (for which I had the easiest part in); I wrote and fixed roughly 30,000 words for my thesis and then I wrote more and fixed it all over again; I interned at Quirk Books and I’m still going!

I did a lot for my internship at Quirk and even blogged about it all, which you can read here. Below are links to the blog posts which I created images for and even some that I drafted myself.

I am so thankful for the opportunity I had with Julie and Nicole and I’m going to miss everyone at Quirk and Rowan a whole bunch.

Continue reading Everything I did at Quirk

End of Week #12

Feature Image for the post

Week #11 was Spring Break! So I was home getting ahead of all my school work. At this point in time I’m three weeks ahead of the syllabus for one class and waiting on group feedback for another class. I feel good about it.

Before I left for Spring Break I cleaned up the inbox for the marketing intern email. I archived everything since I’m paranoid about deleting emails. Ever. And I figured I’d get back and see a couple hundred just from Staples and Newsletters and things. But there were so many more than that.

Continue reading End of Week #12

End of Week #8

leo-updikeThis week I catalogued the Twitter and Facebook bios of the big five and some smaller presses and imprints, uploaded blogs, as per usual, and thought up some ideas for women’s history month.

One of the blogs I did images for was about Leonardo DiCaprio (the poor actor who never wins an Oscar) and which literary roles he’d be awesome for. So I got to make some images with Leo’s amazing face superimposed onto other people and inside cover images, etc.

I’ve been charged with going through Sam Maggs’ The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy: a handbook for GIRL GEEKS and picking out things which we can repurpose for women’s history month. And I was thinking of something along the lines of using the interview pages but using them with famous women in history like Joan of Arc, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Sacajawea, and Gail Laughlin. I feel like it would work well as an image based campaign across Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. I’ve only made one image but I’m waiting to hear back from Julie about whether that’s a cool thing or no.

I want the images to have the same feel as the images in The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy, so I’m trying to use the same font and color scheme as the book–but I’m not overly pleased. Which is why I’m sharing this image because I know that I’m probably not going to use this one.

I’ve got a little bit of time/I’ll do it this weekend on my own computer (in the precious heat of my bed).

Today, Friday, was pizza day! Lauren, the other intern, and I are going to try a new pizza place each week–there are plenty nearby trust me.

I had a little packaging issue today because there was no packing tape left, and then the posters I had to send didn’t fit in the poster tubes, and then I couldn’t find small boxes–point being: I did manage to find smaller boxes, albeit kind of long ones, and I had to use a UPS shipping tube, but had to disassemble it and turn it inside out so I could ship the posters–and all of these boxes ready to ship with no tape.

But I am the MacGyver of shipping and I made it work. Except for the shipping tubes. For which I need more tape to make them a little more weather protected.

As always–blog posts and images. And then when I was done that I went through all the book pages to redo the seller links.

I somehow managed to finish that by 4:00pm. GO ME! So, I’m going to reward myself by getting a Pepsi!

In any case, thus ends week #8. Kind of weird how fast this is passing by…. see you guys next week!

End of Week #7

img_20160217_085646.jpgThis week started on Wednesday because of Presidents’ Day (which I asked about before hand so I didn’t actually come all the way into Philly when I didn’t have to).

As always I drafted posts and made some images.

Not as always: one of my favorite authors died. Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, passed away on Friday.

I cannot find any reason for her death in any article I read and quite frankly I would be incredibly offended if I did given that she was a notoriously private person. I just want to know that she went quietly in her own home.

harperlee

End of Week #6

IMG_0977This week I made promotional images for the Hillary Rodham Clinton Presidential Playset… using the playset… it’s paper dolls.

I played with paper dolls and it was my job. How cool is that?

Mostly I looked for backdrops so that we could print them out, make a little photo studio, and put the paper presidential candidates in different groupings to take their photo.

It amused me for much longer than it needed to, I assure you.

Wednesday was pretty typical. I formatted blog posts, mailed out a lot of books, posters, stickers, tattoos, and such, and worked on cataloging authors’ websites and twitter handles. There was a lot to do in a short amount of time (as Wednesdays are my short days), but all in all it was an easy day.

Friday is three interns day! Well, this is the last three interns day. Poor Lauren had to sit on the floor. I sent out mail–as usual–and we discovered some really important things. The first is The Thorn and the Blossom.

As you can see it’s folded super weird! You can flip it over and read two different stories! Isn’t that awesome!

Also we found Master Puppet Theater. Enough said.

I’ve also started scheduling posts for the Men with Cats tumblr. There were so many cats on my dashboard today.

All in all–good week.

End of Week #4

20160126_121027.jpgWhat a weird week. Monday was not flogged down with mailings. My morning walks in were not hectic… well except for Monday. Because apparently no one knows how to shovel their sidewalks… and I slipped and fell on my butt. No I will not post a picture.

I wrote a blog post this week and–of course–formatted many and created images for them for the usual reason that some bloggers don’t send photos and others send them in all different shapes and sizes.

I’ve been working on some large scale research projects this week. The first has been making a master grid of all the blog posts that Quirk has published. I’m gathering titles, URLs, original posting date, and writing down categories and making some general notes about the layout etc. I’m barely into October 2015. It wouldn’t be as bad if I could organize the posts in the order they were posted, but Quirk’s back end organizes them by the last time they were updated. Which makes my rhythm a little awkward.

October post.

October post.

October post.

July post.

October post.

August post.

October post.

October post.

img_20160120_144658.jpgIt throws me sometimes and I’ve learned not to look at the date in the back end–only the date on the post. It’s easier that way. Makes me feel more sane.

I’m also looking into some new social media content management systems. But-the ones we want to check out are the ones that we have to talk to people on the phone about. Like-listen up companies-I just want to screw around with your program and see how badly I can mess it all up and fix it without you. Because that is my test of a good program. If I have to sit through training on it–I don’t think it’s all that great a program.

At least for social media management. Think about it: there’s usually more than one person handling the accounts, why would you want it to be complicated beyond reason?

Outside of the bulk mailing we interns did last week, there hasn’t been a massive one since. In fact, I think I’ve only sent out like six packages this whole week. Not that I’m complaining–it just feels suspicious that I’m not doing that anymore.

Also-I’m super excited to go see #PPZMovie (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)–especially since I’m at the company that published the book. It’d be sweet if I could go to a special premiere. Probably won’t. But it’d still be cool.

Just as cool as getting a job at Quirk.

*cough, cough* Hire me. *cough*

And then Friday, today, I went to the comic club at lunch time. And everyone just talked about comics for an hour–among other things–but the focus was on comics and graphic novels. I had a lot of fun just listening in.

End of Week #3

20160123_084040.jpgThis was a very mail heavy week. Although not on Monday. Since we were closed. I, however, did not know that Quirk was closed and made my commute in. Usually someone let’s me in around 9:20am, so I kept ringing the bell. When 9:30am rolled around and I still wasn’t in the building I left a note in the door telling them I was at the coffee shop.

I tried the bell again about 10 minutes later.

Bottom line–super cold–cold walk home. BUT I did get to have nap time with the puppies. So warm and cozy.

Wednesday was mostly blogs, research, and analytics.

On Friday, I met the new intern! And she, Kristen (the old intern), and I had a packing party at which we talked about our old man crushes.

I wrote a blog post! Which you can find here. And it snowed like crazy here. Seriously, there’s about 2 feet of snow on the ground. Even my dogs can’t walk through it and they’re big girls!

It’s super cute to watch them hop through the snow trying to find a place to potty. But my dogs have nothing to do with my internship!

Which is going swimmingly. Everyone is really nice at Quirk. I’d love to work there.

End of Week #2

20160115_075805.jpgToday was incredibly hectic, but at the same time it wasn’t. I had very few mailings to send out but the time I would normally spend taking care of that was spent working on making pictures for blog posts.

I couldn’t believe how little I sent out. As always, I formatted blog posts and edited the images for them. Sometimes, bloggers send images with their posts and sometimes they don’t. The images aren’t always great. For example, sometimes they send me 100x100px thumbnails and expect me to blow them up to 650px.

Obviously I look for replacement photos then.

But the biggest problem I have with images comes form book covers: for not all covers are created equal. Literally. Some are very wide, some are very tall, and although I make them the appropriate width they are often too tall and would literally take up the entire screen for the viewer.

So, today I created some images to feature these book covers that also fit into the 650px width requirement. Nothing special, but I like them. I used the cover itself as a background image and then placed the cover on top, rather than just typing out the title. I didn’t just want to feature the image on the cover but the actual cover and so I think the overlap does that well.

After that I did a lot with Netgalley, approve and denying reviewer requests. That took a lot of time. While refreshing the page I also looked up good YouTube channel practices and techniques. I’m hoping I’ll get to make some shorts at Quirk, it could be a lot of fun!

img_20160108_142016.jpgInterns gone wild.

Literally just us reading a book and drinking coffee instead of tea.

Boom.

I also wrote a press release–for the first time–ever. And I didn’t completely botch that up so kudos to me.

Any whoozles! It was a busy day and very rewarding. I’m really enjoying my time at Quirk and I’m glad that I’m able to apply myself in new ways each day.