Days 5 & 6

Day five, aka Friday :), was only a half day. I spent the entire time in a meeting. Sara brought Ashley and I along to a preliminary layout meeting for Jazz/Tap/Hip Hop, which are the outfits that we got to see photographed earlier in the week. Mike, the graphic designer came in and set up his laptop (MacBook :) ) and we each had a printed copy to look at. All the designers were there, plus a couple people from Advertising and John. We looked at each costume and layout and talked about the placement of the models, the background plus the copy. The actual copy will be added next week, right now there is just placeholders. This was only a small section of the catalog and it took us over 3 hours to check it! As we would come to a background, if it was clashing with the costumes, Mike could change the color right there so we could see. A couple of times we had to swap things for the best look. By the time we were done, it was almost noon and time to head home for the day.

Monday was Memorial Day, which I spent going for a 4 mile walk with my dad and brother and then hanging by the pool - our A/C died :( and it was over 90 out. It was great motivation to get up at 5 on Tuesday and go to the cool ice rink before work! On Tuesday, I spent the morning in a proofing. This time we met in the "Showroom", a room with a stage and lighting that can be used to check how costumes look under lights. It is also used as a conference room. Sara, the Senior Designer and my supervisor was there, along with one of the other designers, Donna from Advertising (she ran the photo shoot and basically organizes the catalog), some of the women who keep track of the fabrics, accessories, and all the numbering/labeling that goes with that and also two of the patternmakers to check numbers. We each had a mock up layout again and a print out of the real copy. For each outfit, Pat would read off the copy and Cheryl would check the numbers on her master list. Basically, we were checking to make sure all accessories were listed, if anything was included with the costume, that everything had a name and that all the lists matched each other before it gets mailed out to everyone. This was a first proofing for Tap/Jazz/Hip Hop, there will be several more once the copy is in the layout. Again, it took almost till lunch.

After lunch, Ashley and I researched competitors websites and made notes about them for Sara. I'm a very harsh judge of websites and many of these were BAD! We looked at probably 15-20 between the two of us and I liked 4....luckily I like Curtain Call's ;-)