career – Introduction to Digital Publishing

Biz Comm and Digital Publishing

On Friday, I went to Career Services and met with one of the drop-in career peers to review my resume and to discuss careers in digital publishing. The peer that I met with was very helpful and was open to critiquing and editing my resume on the spot. She went through my resume piece by piece and focused on each section thoroughly. She rearranged sections of my resume and also gave me a paper that has “buzz words” to use when describing experiences. The peer also went through the job descriptions I had and changed it to sound more professional. She went sentence by sentence and circled buzz words that I can use to change up the wording. After reviewing my resume, the peer said that my resume was good compared to others but I would have to work on the formatting and organization of it.

Resume

Buzz words

The last thing the career peer talked to me about was digital publishing. She did not have too much information on digital publishing but she gave me a Career Pathways sheet that is specifically for business communication students. The paper listed common pathways or careers that business communication students can go into. There was a specific section that listed internship sites for Stevenson students. One of the sub sections that was listed was “Publications and Advertising.” In this section, there were a list of businesses and organizations that past Stevenson students have interned with. This list included Baltimore Business Journal, Baltimore Research, Baltimore Sun, Bancroft Press, and many others. The peer also mentioned that if I want to learn more about careers in digital publishing, I can meet with a digital publishing advisor who would give me more information.

Career Pathways

Career Pathways p.2

Journey to Career Services

Last Wednesday, I visited the Office of Career Services, and initially met with the drop-in counselors. they talked to me about all the services that they offer, and even worked with me on doing my resume, which is one of the services that they discussed with me. I received samples resumes and a pathway of keys things to look out for when making a resume and looking for a job in Fashion Merchandising, which is my major. I later met with Jean Turner, who discussed with me what digital publishing was in a general sense, and what I thought of when we think of what digital publishing entails in the Fashion industry. Together, we came up with magazines, fashion books, blogs, literally its everything that is online. Digital publishing is everything that we look at on a daily basis. We moved into then why this is so important to understand.

lastly, Jean talked to me about goals i have, especially those pertaining to my future career. for me, my goals are to eventually be in a Lead Buyer position or Lead on Visual Merchandising position at a corporate level retail facility, like Target for example. knowing about digital publishing in these positions would be exceptionally helpful as there are many tools that I would be using in this field that would help me to improve in my job, as well as Target has their own digital publishing on their website.

What digital publishing can do for me

Having a one-on-one meeting with a career counselor showed me the different ways I can broaden my horizons on what digital publishing can do for me. Ms. Fewster showed me how my major, graphic design, actually provides me with a variety of possibilities when it comes to implementing the use of digital publishing. By using Handshake, I can find jobs and internships that will allow me to get a feel for how digital publishing and what I learn in my field go hand-in-hand. By meeting with Ms. Fewster helped give me the insight for how I can further my education and my experience in the field that I would like to go in.

Apart from just graphic design, I want to become a novelist in the near future. I believe that this course could help teach me what I need to know about analyzing a target audience and how to format my words in a way to keep their attention. However, in terms of graphic designing, I would like to go into the advertising world; pitching ideas and leading campaigns for a target audience. I learned that digital publishing isn’t about just writing blogs, but it’s about analyzing text, the audience, and the author of said text.

Career Services: Entrepreneurship

After attending the careers entrepreneurship panel, I was able to gain a lot of knowledge about what it’s like running your own business. The panel was made up of a select few business owners and entrepreneurs that had a range of different background. From young to older, from college drop outs to college grads. They all were genuinely unique, which was great to see. Their uniqueness offered great insight on entrepreneurship. The panel was hosted by Stevenson’s own Jeannine Morber who is a lecturer within the school of business. She founded the Morber Marketing group in 2010 with the goal of helping businesses integrate new marketing technologies into their current marketing processes. The panel included Garret Pfiefer who now works for his family business at Maryland Brand Management which produces all kinds of merchandise that are tailored for specific companies. Another panelist includes Andy Brown the founder and CEO of Eat Pizza. Eat Pizza is a frozen pizza manufacturing company that covers more than half the nation. Andy also owns a music entertainment company and a local pizzeria. There is also Elizabeth Trimm who is the hunt valley branch manager for Rent-A-Car. This specific branch is the largest in the Baltimore area. Another panelist was Andrew Murphy who is the partner and owner of Flying Frog Publishing, which specializes in the publishing of children’s books. Chris Daley who is the founder and principal of Whirlaway, LLC. Chris’s company specializes in public relations, specifically media relations, social media strategy, content creation, brand building and sales. Last, but not least, John Dinkel is the principal at Dinkel Business Development, LLC. This company is a business development strategic advisory based in Baltimore City.

This careers’ panel connected to my personal career goals more than I thought it would. As someone who is in the technology industry, I didn’t think a lot of this advice would be relevant to me. I thought this panel would be mainly how to run a business. Instead is was more about how to properly run your life, and that make include running a business. This was good for me because a lot of their general advice wasn’t all about running the best business or making the most money, but rather how to have the most enjoyable life. This connects to our class because they preached that advertising is a huge piece to a successful business, and in order to advertise correctly in 2019, you need to be able to utilize the internet.

Timing in Life is Key

From attending the Entrepreneurship Career Panel I gained a lot of insight on how much hard work it takes to build your own brand. This career panel included John Dinkel who is the principal of Dinkel Business Development LLC, Chris Daley who is the founder and principal of Whirlaway LLC, Andrew Murphywho is partner and owner ofFlying Frog Publishing, Elizabeth Trimm who is branch manager at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Andy Brown who is founder and CEO of Eat Pizza, and Garrett Pfeifer who inherited his fathers business Maryland Brand Management. All of these entrepreneurs have built their own brands from the ground up and each told a significant story of how they got into entrepreneurship. Many of thir stories included timing in life and knowing that they could do so much more than their bosses. The one that stood out to me the most was Garrett Pfeifer who inherited the family business from his father. Maryland Brand Management is a company that creates designs for clothing like shirts, hats, leggings, and polo’s He told the story of how his father started the business, he would go to every Ravens game and would sell shirts during the tailgates doing his best to make money and get the brand out while. His friends would always tell him to give up and just enjoy the tailgate with them but his father pushed through and followed his dream. This is where Garrett got his inspiration, his father told him that if he continued to sell shirts for $1 it would only take selling 1,000,000 shirts to make $1,000,000 dollars. Along with telling their stories they each gave the audience three words of advice. The words of advice they gave included:

build networks early
prepare to work hard and be humble
know your strengths & weaknesses
learn and understand sales
understand what you are willing to give up to get what you want
know your “why” and your passion
set goals early
don’t let anyone get in your way
get lots of input but be ready to ignore it

All of the advice and input they gave really made an impact on my thoughts of entrepreneurship and how much work it truly takes to get where you want to be.

This event really connected to our course because in digital publishing it is all about how you design and portray the point you are trying to get across. These entrepreneurs had to build their own brand and image from the ground up. By interacting with people and selling their company is all about the way they come off the and connection they make with their customers which is exactly what needs to be done in digital publishing. Not only did the career panel connect to class but it also connect to my future career goals. This panel really taught me how to prepare myself and set myself up for success but also potential failure. I want to become a Web Designer for a company where I can create and update their website content and design. By taking the different advice from the panelist I can set myself up to be able to attain my career goals in the best way.

Career Services Visit

I went to career services and met with some peer counselors during drop-in hours. The specialist for my major (Human Services) was not in, however, we were able to have a conversation about job paths and internships I could take. Human Services is a degree that allows you to enter many different forms of helping professions. Experience in digital publishing, particularly what we will learn in this class as far as website design, terminology, and grant writing could be of immense use in this field. Jobs like event/program planning, website design and upkeep, and even managerial positions could benefit from this knowledge just to name a few. We also spoke about how the ability to effectively communicate is so important in my field, and digital publishing is just another way I can learn to do so. Competency with technology is also something companies look for, as more and more work is being done electronically, even in HSR.

Recently I’ve been interested in program and event planning positions in the helping industries. I’m even in an internship at the moment that is letting me get a better feel for it. Already I can see the places where the skills I’ll learn in Digital Publishing could be of use. My supervisor and her co-workers have to make flyers, send out e-vites, and advertise their events. They also need to get grants for some projects. Knowing how to effectively use multimodal web-based publishing would be helpful for a good deal of the work that needs to be done in later stages of planning. Grant writing, one of the reasons I took the course will be a HUGE benefit to me in my career as basically every organization in the Human Services field needs people who know how to write grants. It is a major advantage to be able to put that on your resume.

Life is too Short to Wait

Last Wednesday I attending the Entrepreneurship panel with the hope that I would be able to gain a better understanding of entrepreneurship and if it were something I might want to consider. I was a bit disappointed as I felt like I didn’t gain very much by attending the event. I will say that the members of the panel were passionate about their business. Specifically Andrew Murphy from Flying Frog Publishing and Andy Brown from Eat Pizza. They spoke about how they got into entrepreneurship and how it started back when they were in high school. One of the biggest things I felt the panel was trying to express to us was that it is hard work and you will face a lot of people saying no, or it is not going to work. I felt like everyone really lingered on these things and that it was really nothing knew for me.

While I feel a bit disappointed about the event I feel like there were two things that really stuck out to me. The first being the passion and excitement that Andy had. And I felt like he presented it in such a way that I was curious to hear more about his story. Even if I felt like I didn’t take much away, I like to hear him talk. Another thing that really stuck out to me was when John Dinkel talked about how his sister-in-law passed away which caused him and his wife to realize that life it too short to wait and that if they wanted to start this business, then they should do it now. It gave me a little bit of a perspective on taking the leap into business.

As a film major I have always thought about starting a video production business. I am in the process of trying to formulate the business and the brand. I feel like digital publishing is a topic that would be really good for me and helpful. While I felt like the panel discussion did not touch on digital publishing very much, I do feel like this coarse has some potential to be very helpful to me.

Entrepreneurship is Key to Career

The entrepreneurship career panel was an amazing opportunity to learn about the working world and what it takes to make your name in the world of business and sales. The panel included six speakers: John Dinkel, the principal of Dinkel Business Development, LLC, Chris Daley, Founder and Principal of Whirlaway, LLC, Elizabeth Trimm, Branch Manager of the largest Enterprise Rent-A-Car in the Baltimore Division, Andrew Murphy, Partner and Owner of Flying Frog Publishing, Andy Brown, Founder and CEO of “Eat Pizza”, and Garrett Pfeifer of Maryland Brand Management. Each of these entrepreneurs had interesting stories and great experience, but for me, the ones that stuck out the most were Elizabeth Trimm, Andrew Murphy, and Andy Brown. I liked listening to Ms. Trimm speak because of her take-charge attitude; she was not ashamed of her talents in sales and I really respected that she could tell stories like one she did about making more than her bosses and managers when she worked as a sales person. Mr. Murphy had a very captivating way of speaking that could easily keep my attention; he mentioned at one point that to run a business connecting all the pieces and people that you need to work with as one is key to success. He also mentioned the importance of finding people you want to do business with to make your business work. Lastly, Mr. Brown was an interesting panelist as he, similar to Trimm, talked about how he just kept outdoing his bosses or coming up with better business plans than them. Brown also spoke on re-crafting your plan as you go; your plan can’t always stay the same and your approach has to change as your business does.

This event speaks well to the focus of our class: making a statement with your product. Of course, for digital publishing, you are working your hardest to make your work stand out and achieve its purpose by making it call out to your audience through proper visuals, text, and layout. In a business you are trying to achieve the similar goal of reaching an audience, but the considerations are more comprehensive as a whole company is being pushed to sell a product. Digital publishing can actually be an enormous part of running and advertising a business, especially with the rise of solely online businesses. As for my career path, which is nursing, there’s not too much I can do to apply entrepreneurship to my work. Yet, outside of my career path, I work for my family’s bar, creating flyers, advertisements, and social media pages. So I do have some involvement in the work of digital creations and this panel helped me to focus my attention better on outreach to the consumer and progressing business plans.

Meeting with Career Coach

I met with Kelly Fewster last Wednesday and learned a lot about resources available and opportunities I was unaware of. We spent the first half of our meeting talking about my career goals and resources that were available for me to use. We later transitioned to her computer where she showed me more of what Handshake can do when looking for opportunities and how to specifically look for particular jobs like Digital Publishing. An organization called Agora popped up multiple times in searches with Digital Publishing opportunities as well as Video Productions fitting my area of interest. I learned two new websites: Career Shift and Onet. Career Shift is similar to Handshake when it comes to looking for job opportunities but Onet is the one that stood out. Not only can job searches be done, it shows statistics relating to how much a particular occupation makes roughly comparing state highs and lows to federal highs and lows, and the site shows how much in demand the occupation is.

My career goals are to one day work in the film industry as a producer, screenwriter, and/or director creating short or feature length films, whatever my inspiration is at the moment. After my meeting, I learned how digital publishing is a skill, especially when producing, that may intertwine often in my field especially when marketing or raising awareness for a project. The visit with the career counsellor also made me feel more comfortable about searching for job opportunities over the summer and after college without seeing it as such a mystery. Going in to the meeting, I was skeptical because I didn’t know how much digital publishing intertwined in my field. Afterwards, I am very pleased with the meeting.

Digital Publishing in Graphic Design

There are a lot of different types of digital publishing, magazines, articles, social media posts, ebooks, and more. And behind all of these different medias there is a lot of people helping create it and pull it together, but one that may be forgotten is the graphic designer, my career field of choice. We can design the imagery that goes along with that perfect marketing social media post, we design that layout of the magazine article, home page, and more, we even help design the ebooks by choosing the font family, font size, headings, and more. Yes, those simple details were probably help chosen by a graphic designer. All of it may not seem interesting, you may wonder who gets excited about choosing a font, a graphic designer does. We harshly judge websites, social media posts, magazines, menus, and more because blue is not just blue it is indigo, royal, navy, or baby blue. The fonts that all look identical are different because Times New Roman is definitely not Minion Pro and Arial is not even close to Helvetica. We can focus on the kerning, leading, cropping, negative space, and all the other little details because we learned how to have the eye for those things specifically.

More than taking those art and design classes, I have been focusing on some marketing classes, my goal specifically as a designer is to join a marketing, advertising, or social media team. So, taking a class in digital publishing will help me more so, because now I will be able to design those posts, but I also may learn more about the content of those posts so that I can do both for the company. I am hoping this class will get better at knowing all of the content, visual, linguistic, aural, and more to know when to use what and how to produce the content all around in a successful way. It could potentially give me a step up from other designers in the marketing field to be able to know more about different aspects of producing digital media. Then I can focus more on just the colors, fonts, and small design details, but the words written, the purpose of the post, the background and context. Digital publishing and graphic design very much go hand in hand and I know this class can help me in my career goals.