Week 4: In A New York State of Mind

   

Riverside Park

     This week's title says it all, I'm in a New York "state of mind." I can't say that I'm feeling like a New Yorker, seeing how every time I open my mouth, I am responded to with," Where are you from?" I've mastered the subway system and starting to finally live a faster-paced lifestyle, but I don't think I'll ever be able to say "I feel like a New Yorker."

   My boss was out of town for a shoot all week, so she left me with some week-long projects to do for her. On Monday, I worked on another concept board for "Curb Appeal" from the scouting we had done last week. I also had to gather all of the fabric swatches they had considered for last month's cover and group them by brand. This took up most of my afternoon. I never realized they picked from so many different fabrics!

  On Tuesday, the HGTV Magazine staff had a team building workshop off site and unfortunately the interns could not go. So, I had Tuesday off. I woke up early that day and went to see Good Morning America in Times Square. It was really fun, but I was surprised to find that not all of their interviews with celebrities inside of the studio are live, so I was somewhat disappointed. It was still exciting to get to go though. Later that day, I received an email that Macy's was having a sale, so naturally I headed to Herald Square and did some serious shopping in the overwhelmingly-huge Macy's. I ended up with some good finds, my favorite being a DVF travel bag for $50!

    It was back to work on Wednesday. I arrived to an email from my boss with more tasks for me to do. I was glad to get the email, because I was almost done with my other projects. I added contact information to the pictures from our scouting trip last week. It was exciting to me seeing how many responses we received from homeowners wanting their house to be considered for the magazine. All of the houses were so cute! I also continued sorting the fabrics that I had started with on Monday. Later on, I looked up where each of the showrooms were that the fabrics had come from, so that I could help with the returns.

Doorway of D & D Building

     On Thursday, I was out running errands just about all day long. I loaded myself down with 8 bags and 10 envelopes full of fabric to take back to the showrooms. All of the showrooms were located in a building named the Decoration and Design Building. I really enjoyed getting to see the inside of this building. Every floor had multiple show rooms and there were 18 floors...the building was huge! It was also fun seeing the insides of the showrooms and seeing all of the beautiful fabrics they offered. I also enjoyed just getting to meet some of the people who ran the showrooms.

     Friday consisted of running more errands. This time, I had to ride south down to Washington Square. There, I went to a a candy store call Economy Candy. There was more candy in there than the candy store in the original Charlie and the chocolate factory. It was so tempting to not buy myself some fudge! The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with every candy you can think of. It took me a while to find what the stylist was looking for, but finally found some and she seemed pleased with the purchase.

Entrance of our office

     Every morning, I am greeted with two large poster of previous covers along with a comfy royal blue couch and lime green chest used as a magazine table. I feel like this set up is very welcoming and automatically gives you a sense of the bright colors that the magazine enjoy uses. I also like that two previous covers enlarged into poster size so that you can see the creativity of each issue. On each issue, they uses different sizes, colors, and fonts to get the reader's attention and the colors of the lettering all coordinate with the colors used on the furniture on the cover. The only thing I would change about these is that I would use words that attract younger readers. The biggest problem that I have had so far involve the customers. When the customers aren't pleased or have questions about the magazine, their call comes straight to my phone. It has been hard when there is an angry reader on the other end and you have to just let them yell at you, but I just try to stay calm and say "yes ma'am" and "no sir" when appropriate until they are done with their rant. It is also difficult when a reader calls me with a question that is too vague or that I would have no idea what the answer is. .The way I have handled this is by using a confident tone with them and asking my supervisors the best way to go about answering them. The funniest thing that has happened to me this past week is getting a voicemail from an older male reader ranting about a story that wasn't even in our magazine.
I hope that next week won't bring as many angry phone calls!