A felony for using a free WiFi Connection

In my media law class, we discussed the rights of intrustion and appropriation. It's was pretty boring until my professor brought up this article about a man who was almost convicted of a felony for using a free WiFi signal at a local coffee shop in Michigan. He used the WiFi signal from his car on his lunch break and a cop came to ask him what he was doing and the man in the car freely admitted that he was using the WiFi to surf the internet and check his email.

It's intimidating to think that for using a WiFi connection you could be convicted of a felony. The sad part about this is that I use a free WiFi to connect to the internet. This just goes to show that with all the new technology coming out much of it is free, but we should all be careful as to if what we use that is "free" is really so. There are laws that come with all of these new technologies and just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's free.

advertising group projects

I have worked in group projects many times before and most of the time I have been pretty fortunate to be have people in my group who were all willing to pitch in. This last week, however, was a bit of a shock for me. In my advertising class we were divided into groups of two to create a billboard ad. One person who wanted to do the design portion of the ad and one person who wanted to do the marketing portion and write the ad plan for the billboard ad. I chose to do the design portion because that's what I really prefer to do. I was paired up with a girl who ended up being very difficult to work with.

After our groups were decided she told me she didn't know how to write an advertising plan and that she wanted to do the design. We debated about this for a while, but I finally decided we weren't going to be able to proceed with the ad unless one of us gave in. I said I would do the ad plan and she could do the design. Sadly, the day before the ad was due, she informed me that she didn't know how to use any design programs to create the design of the ad; therefore, I ended up pulling an all-nighter to complete the ad design and ad plan.

I was extremely frustrated at first, but I realized that I learned a lot of valuable lessons from this experience. This is how it will be in the real world. People's personalities don't change from being unreliable to reliable once they step out into the real world. I know I'll probably have to deal with unreliable people in the workplace, no matter where I find a position. People will always be people and I'll just have to learn how to get along with them.

designing: not as easy as it looks

Over the past week I have had a pleathora of comments about how I have the easiest major. People seem to be under the impression that when you design something it just comes to you in a wave of creativity, you quickly put some text and a photo on a poster, and boom it's created and finished. Anyone out there who think's that designing is just where you create a bunch of fun stuff and there's no stress is very much mistaken. I have more homework that most of my senior friends. Designing and being creative in your design has to be thought out.

Tonight, my friend asked me to help her out creating a poster for the Talent Board. She is in charge of coordinating the marketing aspect for each individual Talent Association here at BYU - Idaho. She told me to just come and she already had the text and images ready and that it would take tops of a half hour. I knew better than that. I planned my schedule for an hour and a half to create this poster. I had three people telling me what to manipulate for a good hour and a half. I didn't mind it at all, but my friend was frustrated that I wasn't faster and creating the poster.

 I think that people have to understand that when you have the text and images, sometimes the images don't work as well as you thought they would. Sometimes the fonts don't quite match or don't accentuate the poster in the best way possible. Designing takes skill, practice, and I think most importantly patience. By manipulating and taking the time to test out new and different ideas, you will be able to be creative, professional, and learn a whole lot more from failure than success.

freelance designing

I have realized in the past few months that my major could potentially be very helpful if I would like to be a stay at home mom. There are so many opportunities to do freelance design work it's amazing. I have done some myself while going to school and holding a part time job. One thing that I have learned is that if you don't have time to do the freelance work on the side, don't. It's always difficult to say no becaue it's a great opportunity, but as I have demonstrated in the past three days of my life, staying up until 4:30 in the morning is just not the smartest idea.

One other important aspect of contracting freelance design work is that you should always have a contract. Either create your own or start with a template and tweak it to fit your circumstances. Always agree upon how much you will be paid whether it's per hour or a lump sum for the entire job. Also, estimate how long the job will take you and make sure you let the customer know. By doing this, the customer and you will know exactly what you agreed upon and terms will not change later after a job is completed.

There are obviously a lot of other items that could be placed into a freelance designing contract, but I believe that most of those are very circumstantial. I would suggest going to David Airey's webpage to see the contract that he has created for himself. He gives some great tips on contract work as well.

I have placed below my most recent freelance project.