My First Day of Work

So today was my first day at Mystery!  Half of the office was out on "holiday" or a photo shoot.  I started the day making corrections on designs for Ponti's restaurant.  This is a restaurant that Mystery has had an account with and they are opening a second location in London.  My coworker JC designed a business card, a poster, and an invitation to the opening and had sent them to the clients.  I looked over their ideas and made all of the necessary edits such as typos and re-wording some sections.  It didn't take very long, but I had to ask JC lots of questions and he was busy with another project.  Once I was finished, he was in a meeting so I looked through some design books until I could review with him.  He sent them over to the clients and they only had one more adjustment and the designs are finished now.

After lunch, I started on my second assignment.  It is for a cafe in Exeter, England called Madison's.  The clients have an idea to create a New England feel.  The target audience would be middle aged women for tea, coffee, and simple healthy lunch options like salads, sandwiches and soup.  Since I am from New England, I was assigned to help out on this project with another designer named Steve.  To start, I did research and collected images for a few different concepts.  One is a garden theme.  I thought of peonies and lilacs as a few good New England flowers that the target audience would find nice.  The design would have a garden gate and comfy couches with large floral patterns.  (We work on the interior design as well.)  Another concept is a beach theme.  For this one, I was thinking light houses and sand dollars.  For generic New England, I designed a logo with a lattice background.  For some reason, I think a porch with a lattice base is a very New England kind of thing.  I also thought of a bed and breakfast or inn surrounded by fall foliage.  Another idea is to use a white picket fence.  We'll see where all of it goes.  For now, I have a few logo ideas and a large collection of photos from online.

After work, my friend Sarah and I went to get our hair cut.  We had both talked about getting some cool London haircuts.  There is a place called Mr. Toppers that gives men's cuts for 6 pounds and women's for 12 pounds.  We were going to go there, but we heard it was bad.  Someone recommended that we go to "The Academy" where beauty school students cut your hair for a pretty low price.  The other day, we walked to Covent Garden and saw a salon with a sign outside looking for hair models.  So we signed up!  They called us yesterday asking if we could come tonight at 7.  We went and got our hair cut for free!  We left tips, but it was free because we were models for them to learn on.  I said I didn't want anything crazy, but I did want something kind of different.  So I got layers!  At first, she was really careful to make it all even and the instructor came around and showed her exactly what to do.  Then he came by and started the layers.  I thought he said we were doing just a trim even though I said I was okay with layers so I was really surprised when he chopped a bit off.  It came out really good though.  I also said I didn't want to have to blow dry or straighten it to maintain it, so she scrunched it and used a diffuser to dry it.  It actually took close to 3 hours, but they told us it would take a long time when we signed up.  Sarah got a few inches off and she got bangs, or "fringe" as they call it.  I'm really glad we did it.