Michaelbox

With all due respect to both past and future inter­views, I con­sider this one to be my most impor­tant. With this inter­view, I am hold­ing up a mir­ror to your pasts. When you look into this mir­ror, you do not see your­self, you see Alex Cook. “What do you mean” you say? Alex is fresh out of Uni­ver­sity, and at the start of her path to her career.

This is also a very per­sonal inter­view for me. Out of every­one, Alex may be the one who I know the most, and knows me the most in return. I have known her since some­time in mid 2009. When I had the idea to include her in this post series, I knew that it would be my chance to offer a lend­ing hand and help her out as much as I could. With that said, lets help her get her feet off the ground and get to know Alex Cook.

Please intro­duce your­self to every­one. What did you major in and where at? Did you spe­cial­ize in any areas?

Alex Cook: Hello! :3 I’m Alex Cook, your typ­i­cal unem­ployed, yet hope­ful grad­u­ate with an inter­est in design, writ­ing and film. Seri­ously, talk to me about movies and I’ll likely love you for­ever. Any­ways! I recently grad­u­ated with a BS in New Media Pub­lish­ing from Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy. My major includes a mix of graphic design, web devel­op­ment, print­ing, busi­ness and IT. At RIT, I concentrated/specialized in both French Lan­guage and Cul­ture and Con­tem­po­rary Pub­lish­ing. Think eBook cre­ation and design­ing, study­ing the pros and cons of the New York Times Reader, and so on!

You just grad­u­ated this past spring. What do you hope for in your near future, and what fears do you have given the cur­rent job market?

Alex: Good. Ques­tion. Since I’ve grad­u­ated, I’ve come up with such a mul­ti­tude of plans, it’s bor­der­line ridicu­lous. Do I want another bachelor’s degree? In graphic design? Jour­nal­ism? How about a mas­ters in human com­puter inter­ac­tion? Who knows. I think I’d really just like to get some more design prac­tice and expe­ri­ence.. we’ll worry about the job front later. (aka I’d pre­fer to not think about the cur­rent job mar­ket. ;p )

If you could choose for the pig­ment in your skin to be any color pos­si­ble, what would that color’s RGB/CYMK value be?

Alex: Oh man, ide­ally? #333366. I’m crazy about this pur­ple. (C: 93% M: 90% Y: 31% K: 20%) (R: 51 G: 51 B: 102) Real­is­ti­cally though, I need a tan. –__– #CC9966. (C: 20% M: 41% Y: 67% K: 1%) (R: 204 G: 153 B: 102)

If you had con­trol of who fol­lows your twit­ter account, what four peo­ple would you add to your fol­low­ers list? Why?

Alex: Eeeee! dessadar­ling (Twit­ter). Dessa is hands down my favorite artist/rapper/author. Her lyrics and essays are a con­stant source of inspi­ra­tion for me in writ­ing, illus­trat­ing, so on and so forth.

dis­neyp­ixar (Twit­ter). Yet another source of inspi­ra­tion for me. To say that I never dreamed of work­ing for Dis­ney would be an absolute, ter­ri­ble lie. If you could see my wish list of books right now, it’d be over 75% full of Pixar art books.

andrewhussie (Twit­ter). I fol­low the newest MS Paint Adven­ture like it’s my job (“Home­s­tuck,” go read it! :p). He’s got one heck of an imag­i­na­tion, seems to write like a pro, and oh man are his draw­ings cute or what?!

And­ddd ConanOBrien (Twit­ter), because every­one loves a lit­tle atten­tion now and then, amiright?

Below, is a ques­tion and answer

Recently, you returned to Min­nesota where you had an intern­ship last year. Is there any­where in the area that you would absolutely love to work at? Any spe­cific companies?

Alex: Min­nesota is so full of major cor­po­ra­tions, I’m cer­tain hold­ing a design posi­tion at any would be more than fine in my book! (Hey there Tar­get, Best Buy, 3M, Gen­eral Mills! (; ) If dreams could come true, I’d die to work for Rhymesay­ers Enter­tain­ment, an inde­pen­dent hip hop record label based in Min­neapo­lis. I missed out on a design intern­ship for them due to poor tim­ing, but shall we keep our fin­gers crossed for the future? And as for an area? Any­where. Seri­ously, I’m so in love with the state.

What are some of your favorite bands to lis­ten to while designing?

Alex: First and fore­most, Dessa. I men­tioned the inspi­ra­tion deal already, but she’s just an awe­some artist regard­less. Oth­er­wise, Por­tishead, Bjork, Cat Power, Death Cab for Cutie, P.O.S, Bright Eyes, or mostly my col­lec­tion of film sound­tracks and scores. Any­thing that I can lis­ten but not have to put all of my atten­tion into really. Oh, and of course, the Glee Cast sta­tion on Pan­dora when I need some­thing peppy and excit­ing. ;3

A zom­bie, pirate, politi­cian, and ninja have all made it to the Rock/Paper/Scissor final four. Who are you root­ing for and who do you hope they beat to win the championship?

Alex: The zom­bie, of course. And it’d have to beat out the ninja, see­ing as the politi­cian clearly wouldn’t make it to the final round.. and, well, I just don’t like pirates sometimes.

Do you have any pre­ferred styles of design or art?

Alex: Absolutely. Any­thing with some vector-y good­ness in it and I’m more than sold. Also, any­thing that’s got a vin­tage feel, or even some­thing that’s “totally adorable” and appeals more so to chil­dren will always catch my eye. So think vin­tage Dis­ney (espe­cially Dis­ney­land attrac­tion ads and signs) and maybe even my favorite col­lec­tables, Golden Books. I go crazy for these.

Although you are still very young in your career, can you recall any client/customer moments that made you go D: ?

Alex: When I was intern­ing at a print­ing com­pany, I was a cus­tomer ser­vice rep for mostly dona­tion jobs. (why is it that any­one get­ting any­thing for free will always be dis­gust­ingly demand­ing, finicky, and on the occa­sion, insane?) I’ve had a two hour+ phone call proof­read­ing a brochure (there were only three para­graphs!). I’ve hand deliv­ered pieces because a client told me he’d pick up the final prod­uct, then changed his mind. My favorite D: moment though, at my first job devel­op­ing pic­tures, is when a cus­tomer accused me of ruin­ing her neg­a­tives and mak­ing them.. blurry?

If pho­to­shop fea­tures or method tricks could report peo­ple for overuse and abuse, which one(s) would be able to report you?

Alex: How about.. undo? :p I don’t use Pho­to­shop nearly as much as I should, but if we were talk­ing about Illus­tra­tor.. Well, prob­a­bly any­thing related to the pen tool. And live trace/live paint. And undo.

Is there any­thing about being a stu­dent that you’ll imme­di­ately miss? *cough* adobe prod­uct dis­counts *cough cough*

Alex: Adobe prod­uct dis­counts! I absolutely love being a stu­dent. I like learn­ing, assign­ments, essays (love these actu­ally) and lec­tures, I already know I’ll miss all of that. But most of all, hav­ing a set sched­ule and things to do daily.. even if I’m stuck on cam­pus till 5:30 am writ­ing XSLT for the first time, work­ing on research papers, or illus­trat­ing an eBook.

Are there any areas where you wish your degree program(s) focused more on? less on?

Alex: I could write a novel for this answer unfor­tu­nately. My degree was brand new, ever chang­ing and con­fus­ing. Pro­fes­sors were never able to give us a def­i­n­i­tion of New Media Pub­lish­ing, say­ing it was “too new, there’s always some­thing chang­ing!” (You know, aka “we have no idea.”) I wish my pro­gram offered more than two begin­ner design classes and one basic busi­ness class, employed pro­fes­sors who told us more than “I don’t know what you can do with your degree to be hon­est,” and was sim­ply more orga­nized in gen­eral. Oh, and I really wish we didn’t have to lit­er­ally beg pro­fes­sors to get into any inter­est­ing or worth­while classes out­side of our program.

If you were a design super hero, who would you be and what would be your super power?

(Thank you design­coy­ote (Twit­ter) for this sug­ges­tion!)

Alex: I’d have to be Vec­tor Girl! Using math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las and spec­i­fi­ca­tions of geo­met­ric ele­ments to fight crime (ha ha!) with my paths and lines..gun. And look­ing all around spiffy and clean and won­der­ful. Gonna need a side­kick though, any­one down to be Illus­tra­tor Boy? ;D

Any final thoughts?

Alex: Thanks soso much for hav­ing me do this inter­view! Beats all of those job inter­views that seem to be miss­ing in action any day of the week.

And seri­ously, Illus­tra­tor Boy, whatchu think?!

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The absolute great­est thing that all of you read­ers, who have been in the indus­try for awhile already, could do for Alex is to give her any advice you have for some­one in her posi­tion. Think back to when you were in Alex’s posi­tion, what advice would you have loved to get from your peers? What do you wish you knew then that you know now? Please leave your thoughts in the com­ments below and I will make sure Alex reads it all. Fol­low her on twit­ter at her twit­ter pro­file cooxie (Twit­ter).