WEEBLY:

Hello everyone, my name is Alexandra Lindgren, and I am a senior at Clear Horizons Early
College High School. Before I begin, I would like to show you my online portfolio. A lot of the
work that I have done for my Independent Study Mentorship class is on there, such as papers, my
midterm presentation materials, and the journals I have written about my experiences in this
mentorship. Here is the link if any of you would like to look at my portfolio.

As a disclaimer, some of the information used in presentation comes from outside sources and
will be cited appropriately.

HOOK AND INTRO:

You don’t realize how hard it is to design something until you actually try your hand at it. This
semester, I worked with Mrs. Kristy Mapp, the Marketing and Communications Coordinator
here at Bay Area Church. With her, I have had the amazing opportunity to work on projects,
develop new skills, and learn about the behind-the-scenes of doing the church’s art and graphics.

I choose to work here because I had such a great experience with Mrs. Mapp last year, and
because I want to go into art after college. Although I don’t specifically want to go into graphic
design, any experience I can get in doing art professionally is very valuable to me. I get to see
the process of creation, and I get to learn to use industry-grade software such as Adobe InDesign
and Illustrator.

As with last year, this mentorship is actually a part of a course at my school called Independent
Study Mentorship, or ISM for short. In this class, we are required to find a mentor to learn from
for the duration of the semester. At the end of the class and the mentorship, we are required to
have produced a product or project related to the profession of our mentorship, and it must be
useful to the place of work.

EXPLANATION OF PRODUCT:
This semester, my project was to design the marketing material for December Advent, as well as
the Advent calendar. This required for me to make a main artwork - sort of a theme, if you will -
which I then adapted across several forms, such as invitation cards and PowerPoint slides. This is
the same design that goes on the posters. The second part of my project was the calendar, which
required the illustration of 25 different pictures, as well as formatting. It was a big product to
undertake and it was certainly a challenge, but in the end it has made me a better and more
skilled artist. The church will use these graphics to advertise in marketing material and hopefully
it will make the church look appealing. The calendars will be something useful that can be
handed out to families for the Advent season.

STORY:
When I came to our first mentorship meeting, we got right to work with no delay. Mrs. Mapp
already had this project in mind for me to complete, and we were already familiar with working
with each other. During our first meeting, we more or less laid out what I would be doing for the
whole semester, and even decided on my final presentation date and the days by which we
needed to order materials. At first, I was very overwhelmed with everything that I would need to
do, and I felt like I didn’t really know what I was doing. However, as I started working and with
Mrs. Mapp’s guidance and instruction, I believe that I’ve become more and more confident with
each piece of artwork I create.

RESEARCH:
And as with any project, I started with research.

First was the material for the Advent sermons, which included the poster artwork. For this, I
looked up other Advent and Nativity artwork that others had done for inspiration, and I found a
few in particular that I liked. I then made a mood board with those illustrations in order to get an
idea of what I wanted the theme art to convey. One idea in particular that held over from
researching these designs was the beam coming down from the star, which you can see here. The
silhouette-like figures were also a source of inspiration for the art style of the advent calendar.

After the research, I started sketching. Me and Ms. Mapp picked out our favorite aspects of the
best ones, which I then synthesized into what would be a rough precursor to the final image. My
goal was to make something both modern and traditional looking, which meant a lot of clean
lines and solid shapes, coupled with some more organic-looking lines. I also had to choose a font
to go with the artwork, which can end up being complicated with so many different choices. As
you can see, there are a lot of small changes that we made throughout the process.

After the Advent theme art, I started working on the calendar. This started with trying to find an
art style to use, which both Mrs. Mapp and I developed. Basically this style just consisted of
simple drawings filled with color, and then erasing out the lines.

Working on the actual art pieces started right after, and this was a little more hectic, since I had
less time to complete them. Of course, I started with sketching before almost every drawing, but
the sketches were a lot less nice than the ones for the Advent marketing material, as you can see.
I tried to make each drawing at least loosely related to the verse it came with. By making myself
a schedule of finishing at least 4 or 3 drawings a day, I was able to complete everything on-time.
During this process, I occasionally used images for reference if I needed them.

MENTOR LEARNING:
Through everything I have been doing at my mentorship, I have been able to gain a lot of
knowledge and skill. In my last mentorship with Mrs. Mapp, I learned the basics of the Adobe
InDesign and Illustrator programs - this semester, however, I have really gotten the opportunity
to become adept and fast at using them. Along with learning the software, Mrs. Mapp has also
shown me the behind-the-scenes of doing art, such as in how the posters and cards are ordered,
and how the budget is formulated to buy everything. It can be surprisingly expensive!

I have not just learned technical skills, though. One of the most valuable experiences I have had
over this mentorship has been in collaboration and learning to work with another person, as well
as communication. Whenever I did a sketch or made a piece of art, Mrs. Mapp was always able
to give tips and suggestions that improved the piece and steered it in the right direction. My
project is only as good as it is today is because of the teamwork that we both put into making it
great. It’s true when people say that two heads are better than one.

Aside from those things, I have learned things in pieces. I came to one particular realization
while I was working on the Instagram advertisement caption, and I decided to look into how the
advertising actually worked. It turns out that there are a huge range of choices and methods to
choose from, and it is far more complicated than I would have thought. This helped me realize
how complex marketing can be.

Another lesson I learned was that sometimes, you have to settle for ‘that’s good enough’ instead
of working toward perfection or something that isn’t realistic. While I was figuring out the style
of the calendar illustrations, I wasn’t thinking simple - generally, that’s just not my art style.
However, Mrs. Mapp pointed out that something simple was better, particularly due to the time
period in which I would need to finish everything. I love the style that we settled upon, but at the
same time it is a reminder that you may need to think outside the box to get things done.

CHALLENGES:
Anything worth doing will have its share of hardships, and working on this project certainly had
its challenges. I had to manage my time wisely and work efficiently, and I had to become better
at collaborating with other people. For me, the biggest challenges I faced were in coming up with
ideas and in being confident in those ideas.

Coming up with ideas for anything can be difficult, but especially with Christmas and Advent-
themed things it can feel like everything has been done before. I wanted to come up with
something new - something ‘modern but traditional’ as had been requested. Although it was
hard, I overcame this challenge by sketching any idea that came into my head, just to get things
down onto paper. With Mrs. Mapp’s help, we were able to pick out the best ideas and use those.
My second biggest challenge was in confidence. I tend to second-guess myself a lot when I do
art, especially when it’s for something like my project where a ton of people will see it. Usually,
I would just turn to Mrs. Mapp to ask her thoughts on it, which has always helpful anyways.
However, I was not able to do that for the majority of time when I was making the calendar
illustrations. I would draw them and upload them to a DropBox, and just sort of hope and pray
that they would be good. I was honestly a little surprised when I received good feedback, since I
was so unsure of my abilities. Since then, it has been so heartening to hear from so many people
that they love the calendar, and it has helped me become a lot more confident in my abilities.

EXPLANATION OF PRODUCT CONTD:

In the end, I feel that my products have turned out quite well. My theme artwork in the end was
adapted into about seven different images - including the invite cards, PowerPoint slides, posters,
Instagram post, and marquee sign. Most of them are printed or ready to be published, at the
moment.

My calendar has also turned out especially good, I am pleased with how it looks. Some of the
drawings needed corrections and I even needed to redraw one in order to get the right look, but
in the end it certainly paid off. When the illustrations were complete, they were formatted into
the calendar and arranged chronologically. Red coloring was used for the wise men, blue for the
shepherds, and yellow for everything else.

My main goal was to create good art, of course, but I wanted to achieve that traditional yet
modern feel and a feeling of emotion - I wanted each drawing to have some emotional weight to
it. In the end, I believe that I have achieved that goal, and it has been great to hear that people
like what I have produced.

THANKS AND BENEFITS:

Over this mentorship I have learned so much about art and teamwork, and I have had a lot of fun
doing it. I know that the skills I’ve gotten will give me an edge as I continue on my journey to
school and into my career. It has been an amazing experience to work with Ms. Mapp and
ultimately see a product I worked on come to life.

I would like to thank all of you for listening and to my second evaluator Ms. Candi Cordova, and
I would like to thank Mrs. Kahlich for teaching our ISM class and always being there to help.
But above all I would like to thank my mentor Kristy Mapp for the amazing opportunity she has
given me. I had the best time working with you and learning from you, and I know that you have
made me a better artist and collaborator than I started out as.

Thank you!
Questions?