I have a friend her name is Kyla Covert.  She was a student of mine at Johnson & Wales University.  She has since graduated and is now looking for the job.  I have worked with her on several projects in the last year and she is amazing.

So what does Kyla bring to the table?

Well other than amazing illustrative talent, she’s smart.  These days the word smart seems to be overused and under appreciated.  I don’t use “smart” that often, unless I’m talking about my boy, because frankly I think it’s hard to find smart talent.  What I mean by smart is that you don’t have to explain things to a point where you kill it for the talent to understand what you want.  In fact, with Kyla I under explain things so she can make it her own. I trust her!

I needed a logo done recently and I had an idea in my mind.  I sent Kyla a short 3 sentence email and she simply wrote back “I know exactly what you want”.  A day later she sent me a half a dozen logos that hit the nail right on the head. She just makes things easy.

Why am I writing this Post

Today when there is so much talent out there and employers are knee deep in resumes I think it’s important to highlight the real talent.

Kyla is so talented and motivated but to some degree naïve to her own talent. The purpose of this post is to do two things. One help Kyla realize just how talented she is, so she increases her own value and two to help her find THE job. Not just any job but one where she can grow and be utilized.

I have written a few recommendations for students in the past, I don’t write many because I try to focus on helping only on the real talent. To be fair most of my students wouldn’t get a recommendation to run an agency or be a creative director and that’s because they are young both in age and in experience. However I would recommend them whole heartily for a job where they can not only contribute, share ideas and grow with a company but learn from their team. Kyla is just that person. She’ll make a difference on your team, she’ll learn and improve her own skills every day. She’s an investment because she’s loyal and knows that with the right company her growth and success is directly correlated to that of the team/company.

Below is a small preview of Kyla’s work. If you have any questions about Kyla please feel free to email me. I’d be happy to share my feelings about her work ethic, talent and how she’s improved my projects. highfive [(at)] jesserfriedman [(dot)] com you can also find Kyla on Twitter.

So I can imagine these beautiful scenes in my head but when I draw them out they look like I was using a broken crayon and I have one small hand like the guy from Scary Movie.

I drew this museum quality portrait to be used in some wireframes for a web project at Neal Advertising.

Lately my son and I have been watching a lot America’s Funniest Home Videos reruns. It’s actually quite funny watching my sons reactions to back flipping cats and whiffle ball nut shots. He finds it all pretty hilarious.

I found it rather surprising that America’s Funniest Home Videos is currently working on it’s 20th season, however now it’s called AFV. The AFV acronym, while easier to say does little to revive the show.

It Got Me Thinking, What Can AFV Do To Get Back On Top

AFV was one of the first of it’s kind. A show that was solely built on UGC (User Generated Content). UGC is a term tossed around in the Web 2.0 discussion rather ominously but the original Bob Saget hosted show was a pioneer.

Rewinding back to the late 80′s America’s Funniest Home Videos had no real competition except for America’s Funniest People but it was on the same station. Fast forward to today, AFV competes with YouTube, Jackass, WebSoup and many other UGC or reality shows. (more…)

I became very aggravated with the fact that I couldn’t find this skit anywhere on YouTube or other sites. Every clip I saw was of a news station covering the skit. I finally stumbled upon the video here “The Huffington Post”.  I put it on my site to offer it to anyone who wants it.  I don’t want to write a post that has nothing to do with web building so… “Meta Tag!” that’s webby enough… Enjoy.