so, lulu is absolutely unreliable.

fully 50% of everything i order from them has some errors so big (terrible colors or full-bleed not working) that the portfolio is unusable.

they're pretty good about giving refunds, but it takes them a week, and that sure as hell doesn't help when the portfolio was DUE yesterday.

Harvard told me not to worry about the UPS error...they said they understand and usually accept work for a few days past the deadline for issues such as UPS being horribly unreliable.

Well... the portfolio isn't due to Harvard for a couple weeks, so UPS shouldn't affect their online application right? OR was there something for international students that's different?


I see the job listing on here - looking for architect in Iceland.

I wish I could move to iceland! Arkitekto, please be hiring in 4 years? Please?

I heard form someoone that used to work with admissions at GSD...she told me that the deadline is important..but the reviewers don;t sit down with everything until like third week of Jan...she said thing can come in after teh deadline as long as the app is in....and that they don;t check if deadlines were made so much...so Try and get stuff in on time,...but I think schools are understanding of circumstances...We, as applicants, put so much pressure on it...but if you are good and they like your work...then that is all that matters. I mean we PAY them to deal with us, they should be understanding.

robust84, did you follow all of lulu's prepress specs carefully?

color mode RGB - all graphics including bw
300dpi resolution jpgs
total # pages divisible by 4, last page blank
upload full doc as single PDF

at least 0.5" margin around sides, 0.3" gutter in center
OR
bleed:
make leading edge bleeds 0.25"
top/bottom bleeds 0.125"

Also I'm curious, would you be able to email photos of the messed up pages so I can maybe get an idea of what went wrong? (I'll show you mine if you show me yours, to be fair! - and I have some experience in print production so I may be able to tell just by looking.) I made my first 2 portfolios that were due on the 15th by hand but was thinking of running off the last few on lulu because making by hand was such a pain in the arse. Now I'm scared of lulu! eeeee

ps I make that high pitched eeeeeeeeeeeeeee noise in real life too, when somehting freaks me out!

namby, i did follow lulu's specs exactly, unless i messed up somewhere.

although they told me bw pics should be greyscale colorspace not rgb.

there is generally a small white space either at the top of the page or the bottom of the page, despite my using their specified bleed.

i contact their customer support and they said it's because the guy working the printer must have trimmed the pages wrong.

the problem is it always happens, and sometimes it's so small that it's still usable and 50% it's ridiculously bad, unusable. i dont understand and i'm really scared because i'm printing out my ivy portfolios (harvard, princeton) this week... and if they fuck up i'm kind of out of luck

how do i email you>

Hey,

You can just email me through archinect if you click on my profile. I'm applying to those two schools as well (also yale).

Yikes, I'm sorry you are having so much trouble. In my case, I've already printed out most of my next 3 portfolios so I do have a backup plan. It's just that the actual assembly was so timeconsuming that i would rather try lulu I guess. However, I will have something to send to schools regardless. Maybe you could look into doing the same?

can't print it myself, my own printer (HP 1510) pretty much sucks. basically, all you need to know if that if you try to do it full bleed there will often be a white stripe at top or bottom because they trimmed it wrong. and they'll offer you a refund, but it won't matter because it's too late for the schools' deadlines.

Did you notice any problems with alignment over the SPREADS (not just at edges?)

Like.. you have a 2 page spread, full bleed, with one image over the whole spread that needs to align at the crack. Does the crack align; does your portfolio design have anything where that would make a difference? Would you mind if I just email you a few snaps of my folio so you can see what I'm talking about & let me know if you think it would be a problem? I'll have to go through and re-adjust my whole portfolio if I send to lulu so I'm not sure if it's going to be worth my time or if I might as well just hand-bind my own again.

I'm coming from a non-arch background so I'm not even sure we will be considered in the same criteria as far as the applicant pool, so even though we're applying to the same schools I don't really mind sharing my stuff. I understand if you don't want to though.



Anyone else have results from lulu, good or bad? Earlier in the thread it seemed like people were happy with them.

yeah the gutter (crack) is a problem. they say put no bleed there but that's def not true. i figured out that you gotta actually but 1/8" of a bleed there and it worked perfectly the first time but is a little off the other times. it also depends on what type of binding you have.

I had avoided this thread for fear of mind-crushing anxiety. For anyone who applied to the GSD and was worried about Recommenders not getting letters in on time- I called admissions on Friday afternoon and they said they had piles of stuff arriving from FedEx, and wouldn't be getting through all of it until later next week. So fret not, your letter could be sent overnight on Monday and you won't be punished for it. The GSD admission folks seemed very understanding.

Anyone doing wire-binding in the NYC area? I was going to use a local Staples, but am somewhat hesitant to give them my handmade school portfolios...

I have one recommender with outstanding letters still. It's holding up 2 applications. Now, I'm not complaining, because I am trying to finish up christmas gifts and that's what I'm doing in the meantime, but I'm resisting the urge to email her again. How much is too much nagging?

I don't know anything about Lulu, sorry.

not enough. If they accepted the role, and are lagging...then a non aggressive reminder is never out of the question in my book.

3 down. 1 to go.


I was unsure about my SOP in the end.
But what's to be done about that.

It sounded good for a week.. then I began to find things I didn't like.

Oh well.

it's good they're finally out of that tiny little hole in the wall gross place they were in. where are they now?

oh i hope you don't mind long hours. i hear they're slave drivers. but it'll look good on your resume and you'll learn a lot for sure.

oops wrong thread

LOL, robust you had me really confused there for a moment.

OK, so my next two applications are really just taking forever to get out the door. I'm not terribly concerned about it because I'm still really early but between Christmas and work, I'm swamped. I just want to get them done! But there are not enough hours in the day.

So what are everyone else's next deadlines? Jan 1?

Jan 1: Portfolio for GSD due.
Jan 8: Portfolio and all application materials for Yale due.
Jan 15: Portfolio and all application materials due for Cornell, Penn, and Columbia.

princeton wants everything in on december 31st. which, by the way, in addition to being new year's eve, is also a sunday.

i guess they are big on theory rather than practicality...

I envision a mountain of portfolios piled up in the hallway in front of the admissions office door, not to be brought inside until January 2nd at the earliest.

I got Yale on Jan. 8th, then UT Austin, Rice and Syracuse on Feb. 1st. Trying to get them all out before xmas but that most likely will not happen.

Good luck CP. I'm also applying to Yale and UT. Not sure about Rice yet.

Yeah Rice is gonna be damn near impossible to get into. Out of all the schools I am applying to I think that one is gonna be the most competitive. Not sure I'd want to live in Houston, but there program is awesome so I guess it doesn't matter too much.

Good luck to you as well. And everyone else on here going through hell to get these apps done.

Columbia 1/15
Pratt and Parsons 2/1
UofI 1/15, still not sure if I'm even going to apply. The thought of living in the boonies while my wife is living it up in New York is not the way I want to spend the next 3-4 years.

Just received an email letting me know that my last LOR just got into GSD. doh!

I live in Houston and it's not bad. Actually has some really good points. Not sure if I'm applying to Rice, though. Program's a little too casual and theoretical for my tastes.

I have a problem.

I just got a confirmation email from the first school I sent my application to saying that they had received it (yay!) They said they still needed some items to complete the application (boo!) And I quote:

"To complete your application we must receive the following items prior to
2/1/2007.

-1 letter of recommendation from blah blah blah
-Bio Resume
-Statement of Intent"

Um, actually I included my resume and my Statement of Purpose. The application and qualifications on the web site didn't even ask for my resume, and it asked for a "Statement of Purpose". Are they retarded, or is there a difference between a Bio Resume/regular resume and a Statement of Purpose/Intent?

Moreover, why isn't this listed anywhere?

I am going to say that they are retarded for now and hope they respond to my email that I sent back.

WonderK...please tell me you're going to call them retarded in the email!

What school was that?

Carnegie Mellon. I already wrote them back and refrained from calling them retarded. There's no telling what might come out of my mouth when I call tomorrow though....

Seriously though, dumb, right? I mean, am I losing my mind or am I missing something.....

yeah, i have to admit the general handling of admin stuff at these top calibre schools has been surprisingly disappointing.

These same people must also run UPS.

jasoncross - man that sucks. I hope everything worked out for you.

It all finally got there. But, 6 days for overnight shipping can give one a raging headache.

6 days!!! I sent mine from Hong Kong on DHL and it got there in 30 hours. If I don't get accepted, I'm going to work for DHL. Besides, those yellow and red uniforms are much cuter than UPS brown...

arghhhhhh! I am in kerning hell right now. I'm finally getting down to some of the nitty-gritties in my portfolio, and I feel like I could keep kerning and tracking this stuff for another two weeks solid, and I just don't have that kind of time.

watch out for them orphans...they bite.

yeah, I'm not even there yet. I'm still on headline-sized text.

The sad part about this is that this work might go to waste for half of my schools - three of them want SLIDES. I know you can get slides made digitally, so all my text can be included, but I'm not sure if committee's will be wierded out to see slides laid out like web or print pages. What do you guys think? Nix the text on the slide portfolio, or stick with the same layout for both formats?

you have enough text in your portfolio that you have to kern? i thought they wanted pictures... i guess you need some words to describe it eh?

most of the schools I talked to wanted two to three lines to describe each piece, and each piece gets a label which indicates title, media/size, and class/professional/personal/competition. The bigger your text is, the more important kerning is, so, given the program I'm applying to, I feel that the label of each piece needs to be perfect.

My portfolio's all content, baby. No kerning here; just big, fat genius!

rationalist is the one applying to MFA graphic design programs, right? In that case, kerning is content, and is hugely important! I FEEL YOUR PAIN, GIRLFRIEND.

yep. This will actually be the longest publication I've done since I learned anything about typography. Sad, but true. I just hope that somebody notices all my hard typographic work when reviewing my application (my resume and SOP will be pretty, too).

me again... am I the only one still working on this stuff?

Anyway, I have a question. I'm dividing the portfolio into categories- 'architecture', 'packaging', 'identity', 'publication' and 'advertising' are what I have so far. What would you call the category that encompasses things like invitations and greeting cards? They weren't letterpressed, so it wouldn't go that way. I'm stumped, but that may just be because I've been thinking about it too hard. Any ideas from the peanut gallery?

How about 'Print'?

...and you're not alone - I'm still doing this stuff too. :(

what is kerning anyways?

the spacing between individual letters. Programs like Illustrator, InDesign, and even Word use Auto-Kerning, which is generally fine for body text (on which you apply tracking, which is like kerning but even spacing throughout letters applied to a whole line). But when you blow something up to headline-size how sometimes there's a really big space between a couple letters, or that there are a few that seem too close together, so that the word is weighted unevenly? The process of adjusting that spacing to make things more even is called kerning. Poor autokerning is usually caused by the way differently shaped letters interact with each other visually. for example, capital A's throw things off a lot because of all the space towards the top, and the label 'ARCHITECTURE' universally came out like absolute crap before I hand-kerned it, especially towards the 'ARC' end of it.

Graphic designers kern text a lot, and once you get started on it, you discover that you can spend a whole evening kerning a very little bit of text if you let yourself, because it's easy to nudge a little, then nudge back a little, then try working on another letter pair, and so on.

Thx. Chch, that could work. Then I could nix 'Publication', and have those all in together. Good thoughts. I knew there was something obvious that I was looking past...

ah, there's a good example for you, robust. Look at my last post, the word 'ARCHITECTURE', the space between the R and the C is really bad, and needs to be kerned out. Actually the space between the E and the C later on isn't great either. The capital C's in this font suck.

paperback.

(I'm just posting so I can turn of the email alerts. :)