Orientation and first day

First things first, I took the subway from my Brooklyn apartment to work and didn't look at a map ONCE. Boo yeah. It's a pretty simple commute and it only takes about 35 minutes, so that got me there niiiice and early. I was the fifth intern to get to the training meeting, and as it turns out, Pengin hired 50 interns this summer. WOW! However, I am the one and only design intern and that makes me feel pretty special. Out of the fifty human specimens I am one of 8 males, which isn't all that surprising but it is still kind of funny to look around sometimes. As the interns congregated around my table I smiled as we introduced ourselves. At my table of five, there were two Yale students, one Harvard Business student and a student from Columbia University. Oh yeah, and little ol' me from  BYU-Iiiidaho. As people introduced themselves there were a lot of editorial interns, some copyrighting, marketing, production and what not. Our icebreaker activity was to come up with an acronym for some assigned letters each table was given and create a slogan etc. We became "Zimmerman, Jones and Garfield" an attorney office specializing in horse related injuries. "Got Bucked? Get Bucks! At Zimmerman Jones and Garfield, we don't horse around." Kinda lame, but I did draw a picture of a cowboy getting kicked in the face by a horse. We also enjoyed a hearty bagel and fruit breakfast to munch on during a fairly lengthy presentation about Penguin Group. Turns out our parent company is Pearson, which I did not know. We also have an extremely impressive backlist, which means we own rights to a lot of old classics. We are also a global company in a hundred and something countries. This is all from memory, but yeah, these are things that stood out to me.

Toward the end of the training we were put in core groups that we are supposed to meet up with on a weekly basis. In our core groups, we are 'sposed to discuss out experiences and what we've learned etc. Naturally people were shocked to learn that I'm not only married, but that I've been married for over 2 years. LOL. Yeah I forget how unusual that is sometimes. The girl that attends Harvard Business knew quite a bit about Mormons and said that there is a "large Mormon population" at Harvard....which for some reason sounded funny to me. It almost sounded like a statistic for like a pigeon population or something. She also talked a little bit about Kim Clark who blew everybody away by leaving for Iiiiiidaho.

The rest of the day was introduction after introduction, with a short break for photos for our id badges. I absolutely love the people here. There isn't a single one that doesn't have a great demeanor and positive attitude. While it is largely female dominated, there are a few male designers who are wicked cool. As you will see in the photo, I have my own little cubicle area with a phone and everything. I had to set up a voicemail for my phone and everything. Holy cow, I have an extension. I've always wanted an extension! Also, Deborah Kaplan welcomed me with a very beautiful Penguin cookie on my keyboard. She's so nice!

I was also introduced to the current projects that are being launched this upcoming season...which is Summer 2013's books. Obviously that is a year out, so I am now privy to top secret, confidential information that if I wrote on this blog I would be brutally maimed and executed. And so would you for reading it.

I learned some other really interesting things such as budgets for books, workflow from start to finish, and some of the reasons they choose certain illustrators, photographers, or designers.

Some of my big take home lessons from day one: publishers look for variety in illustrators. Do not try to be just like somebody else or there is no point in hiring you.  Also, an illustration for a book cover is a very collaborative process. If you are good to work with, you are way more likely to get hired again than if you are a diva and your art is amazing.

This week I'll be doing some grunt work, which was to be expected. Filing cabinets stufffffed to the brim full of records of books that have come and gone. That's okay though. It's familiarizing me with a lot of past projects and you know...this stuff has to be done by someone right?

NYC notes: iPhone keeps saving my bacon. H&M really is that amazing. The L line is a can of sardines in the mornings. Lamb gyro from the street vendor= delicious.

The welcome cookie

My very beautiful office/cubicle/workspace

Some very stuffed filing cabinets. I literally couldn't even fit a finger between these pages.