Tips for Effectively Working from Home

{1} Define Your Work Space - set aside a space to work where you can completely focus on work.

{2} Stay Organized - it can be hard to separate work life from home life, but with these three tips you can make this easier. Keep an Up-To-Date Calendar, be it digital or paper to keep track of your upcoming tasks and events. Use a To Do List- create a daily, weekly, or hourly to do list to help keep track of the variety of things you need to get done. Everything has a Place- make sure that you keep all your different papers and projects neat and organizes don't complicate your space by putting household items in the mix of your work space

{3} Understand Your Expectations - you have to trust yourself that you can get a job done from home. You must know yourself in order to know how you can work from home

{4} Take Breaks - it's important to remember to take time for yourself to breathe and step away from your work. You still need to eat meals and give your brain some time to pause and relax for a little while.

{5} Define Work Hours - try to set certain hours that you're going to work from home so that you continue to maintain some sort of schedule. Maintaining balance is important so that you don't burn out and end up driving yourself mad

{6} Don’t Isolate Yourself, But Also Set Boundaries - it's important to stay connected with your co-worker, or if you work by yourself, to try and stay connected with the outside world in some way. But remember it's also important to set boundaries with your friends and family. Make sure the people in your life know that you have a job and you have to get work done, even if you're working from home

{7} If Possible, Go Into the Office- sometimes its goes to go in to the office and actually get people to see your face in real life. It will make a big impression and show a lot if you make the little bit of extra effort to be present and show your face to the company

The Final Word - working from home is a privilege, you just want to make sure that you don't let your work life completely consume your home life. Be sure to take breaks, find balance between working and having a healthy personal life 

{ Throwback Thursday- 4 }

This is the fourth installment of my Throwback Thursday. This week I decided to showcase something that is not as old as the past designs. This is a recent design within the last year. Also unlike past Throwback Thursday this one will already show the changes that were made.

This design was one for my Advertising Design class, the project was one made for practice. We were each given a random object that we had to create an ad for, I was given rye bread. From the beginning I knew that I wanted to create a creative ad that had a catchy phrase on it. After an hour of brainstorming I came up with "Rye Not ?". From there the ideas grew, before I knew it I was writing rye not out with mustard and going thru the super market like a crazy lady looking for the best loaf of rye bread. After numerous photo shoot and a whole bottle of mustard I had my design. The next step was to create a simple logo, since this was a practice design the layout did not have to be perfect, it just had to give the idea. Making the logo design a little less stressful, since my best friend and roommate is a talented animation student { Jacquie Stone } I asked her to create a quick sketch of me holding a fresh loaf of bread. In less then five minutes, Rachel's Rye Bread was created.

The design that I handed in for the project is the image below.

For the critic the design was given tons of positive feedback, the main problem that people had with it was the rye bread background was hard to see and tell that it was rye bread. The layout needed a lot of work, but for the project it was just what she was looking for.

Once this project was done I had no intention of going back to fix it. It was just a busy project to teach us a simple lesson about advertising. But during the summer break I had some time on my hands and wanted to fix the mistakes. After a few hours I had pretty much created a completely different design that was so much better then the original.

Below is the Rye Bread ad that I use in my portfolio this very day.

I really love this design and how simple it is. If I had a chance to fix it later on, I probably would take it just to see how different it could look after another redesign. But as of right now I'm very happy about the design and how far it came in such a short amount of time.

{ Throwback Thursday-3 }

This is the third installment of my Throwback Thursday. This week I decided to showcase one of my proudest moments as a Graphic Designer. Back when I was a senior in high school at the BOCES Center. The centers mail van needed a new look, they wanted to place a van sticker on it that promoted BOCES and everything it has to offer. My teacher had all nineteen of the students in my class create designs that would be submitted to the BOCES board that would pick the winner. The winner would be put in charge of creating the van sticker for all of sides. Out of all the ideas my design was picked as the winner. I had to select a team that would work under my direction and would have to follow my design and guidelines.

The idea behind the van design was simple. I wanted to create something that would showcase both the school and my talent. The colors were mixtures of purple and other shades in that color scheme. The side of the vans had purple curves that had grid like pieces coming off of it. The design also featured actual photographs of students that I when to school with. I loved this project it was a great experience into the real world of design. I remember the whole process, from creating the design to the pieces actually being placed on the van. Seeing the pieces being put on to the van was a proud moment for me, it really made a hard time in my life seem better.

Around the time it was placed on was one of the hardest times of my life, my grandfather was just diagnosed with colon cancer and had been in the hospital for days. It was also around the time that I was graduating from high school, so needless to say I was filled to the brim with emotion. Seeing them put the van stickers on the van was a great way to escape and really helped me focus on my design career.

Below are the design layouts and the actual van with my design on it.

Would I make any changes to the design, of course I would. One of the first things I would fix would be the color scheme, if I can remember there are around ten colors on the van all together. For a moving billboard that may be too many. I would also change the type on the van as well, in some spots it can be hard to tell what the wording actual is. But at the end of the day I am really proud of all I was able to accomplish in such a hard time. There maybe some changes I would make but nothing beats driving down the street and coming across the van driving pass you.

On a side note I would like to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgivings, enjoy your time with your families and enjoy your lovely Thanksgiving meal. And for all of you that go out on Black Friday shopping be safe and get some great deals.

{ Throwback Thursday- 2 }

This is the second installment of Throwback Thursday. This week I decided to show the first project I ever had to do at Villa Maria College. It was the fall of 2011 and I was just getting use to life as a college student.

Our first project was a simple one that was the perfect start to such a new experience. We had to find a leaf, which was easy being that it was fall. From there we had to trace and outline the leaf with tracing paper and start making a simple design out of it.

We had to create a total of four designs, each going off of the one before it. The first design is the top left, this one had to be created using only lines and curves and had to be kept simple. Next was top right, this one had to work off of the top left design. For this one we had to create more curves that still keeps the shape and balance of the original design. The third design on the bottom left is a work off the top right. From the right I had to connect elements to create a color combination. The final and last piece is the bottom right. This is created from the bottom left design, from there I combined all pieces to create a unique combination that balanced out the design.

Are there things I would change, of course. The changes maybe slim but it would make all the difference in the design. I would change the structure of the design and the curves used with in it, creating a more balanced and visual piece.

But since it was my first project at Villa Maria if I had a chance to go back in time to change it I probably won't. Without this design I may have never had the chance to grow to be the designer I am today.

{ Throwback Thursday - 1 }

As I may have mentioned in some of my past post I have been studying design for the better part of six years. I started in high school at a local BOCES center and have continued my education at Villa Maria College where I am a senior. In those last six years I have created somewhere between 150 and 200 designs, some I'm proud of, others not so much. As a Twitter user I have noticed that over the last year or so that Throwback Thursday has become something very popular. So it only makes sense to me to start my own Throwback Thursday, but instead of posting old photos of myself I'll post old design. I give you a brief description of the design and tell you what I would change, what I like, and what I was thinking when I designed it. So without further or do I present to you the first Throwback Thursday Design on Rkaye Design. And remember to check back on Thursday to see more of my old designs, who knows you may learn something new.

First Throwback is back to my junior year in high school, the year was 2010 and I had just started at the BOCES Center earlier that year. Being 16 I was still unsure of what I wanted to do with the rest of my live. I knew that I was good with computer, was an okay drawer and all my best grades came from classes were thinking outside the box was important.

For those of you who are not all that familiar with BOCES Centers, it's a vocational school that high school juniors and senior have the option of going to for half of their school day. The one that I had choose out of the eleven or so options was Communication Design. The class forced on Graphic Design, Photography, Press Printing, Silk screening, and a light look into animation. Graphic Design was the thing that I loved the most. One of the many parts of BOCES was the their involvement in SkillsUSA.

SkillsUSA was a membership that all BOCES student could sign up for. It was a career and technical student organization. It has around 335,00 student members, in the United States. Ever year they have a National Leadership competition that all the winner from each state get invited to compete in. To get to National, you had to win states, to win states you had to win regional. These were big deals in all BOCES Centers, everyone wanted to win National for their program.

As a junior in my class we completed in Regional. In our class we had to create a t-shirt design, that would be used for the next years Regionals competition. We had some guidelines and rules that had to be followed. The design had to use SkillsUSA colors which were red, navy blue, and gold. It also had to say SkillsUSA, 2011, Area 1 and New York.

In my class of nineteen all of use designed and created something we all thought could win. The design would be submitted to Regionals and also in our local BOCES Center competition. It was judged by three of the schools employees.

Below is my design for the competition.

I'm proud to say that my design won the local competition and even prouder to say that it won Regionals and was used for the t-shirt design the following year.  Here's a picture.

Are there things I would change, or course. Looking at it now with six year under my belt I see a lot of mistakes that would defiantly not fly in the real world. The stroke on the letters in a huge graphic design mistake that is embarrassing to show on a design blog. But from this mistake I've grown. If I could go back and tell myself what to change or how to design I probably would suggest to change the shape of the design and get rid of the jagged edges, change the type and probably not use so much clip art in one design.

Honesty if I ever when back I would never change this design. It was really the start of my design career. This now awful design gave me the confidence that I needed to start the career of my dreams, and for that I thank my t-shirt design for all it has done for me.