Blog of Nikki Veldhuis

It has been a long time ago when I put something on my blog (again). I’ll split my story in two posts for the sake of readability.

The reason that I lacked my posting ratio is I’ve been busy, very busy. Last week was the final week of school, and I had two presentations and had to deliver some reports. It was crazy, but I think I’ve finished everything successfully. I still have to wait for the results for two of them. In the weekend there were a lot of party’s going on and the weather was beautiful. I spend my time sitting in the park with my homies and go to student activities for one last time. Most of the students left last weekend to work or go back to their hometown, so the student life is done here. Luckily, some people I met are going to stay in Eskilstuna, so I have some company this month. I’ll post my plans in the next post, but first I’ll show you what I’ve done for the last couple of weeks.

Information design project

the main thing I was doing was an 8 week long project. This was a group project, so working with Swedish people, and this was a great experience. The last week was kind of hectic, making the final document and the presentation.

the overview of the blast furnace and the sign placed next to it

A close up of the sign.

An illustration of the Blast furnace process.

the lay out of the sign

The illustrations were made by Sophia, the illustrator in our group. Most of them where made in the evening we spent in school, so I was great we could finish this at the time. The presentation two days after was in Norberg, where New Lapphyttan is located. The customer was Swedish, so the final documents and presentation was in Swedish. I helped to make a set up of the documents and did some photoshop work in the end. Overall in this project I was responsible for the group management and the conceptual thinking.

Graphic design course

As a last moment choice I joined a graphic design course. Like I said in my previous post, it was a long time ago when I worked serious on this subject, so this was a great opportunity to brush up my skills.

We had to make a folder informing about an innovative project and as a second assignment a book layout. I think the first one is self explanatory, so here some pics:

Back and front

the inside of the folder

For the PDF, click here. I also made an book layout, but it’s kind of boring to show here. It’s all about alignment, layout and typography. Click here if you want to see it.

So this is what I’ve been doing lately. I still feel kind of sad when I think about that my exchange study is officially over. It was a great experience, and Sweden is a great place to do your study. If I have the chance I will definitively do an exchange study again. But no worries, it’s not over yet. I have a lot of plans for the coming weeks!

the cruise ship (thanks for the photo, Kathryn)

Last week we went with exchange students on a cruise to Riga, the main capital of Latvia. At first I thought it was a very cultural trip, but in the end it was an infamous booze cruise. Finally I know what it’s like, the Swedes here told me about this, and it’s very much like as they say it is. I won’t go in detail, but it was fun and awesome! We had 7 hours in Riga, but I didn’t see much of the city I think. We went for a long lunch (stayed around 2 hours in a restaurant) and walked through the city to find a supermarket to buy some cheap liquor. Yeah, Sweden is really ridiculous expensive, so buying booze in another country is a great opportunity. We came back on Friday, and I used most of the day to recover. It is kind of a shame that this was the last official trip organized by the International Commission. Also, most of the Dutch students left this week back to Dutchland. I will probably see them again somewhere in Maastricht.

But anyways, back to work. The new course is fun to do. The lectures are unfortunately in Swedish, but the presentations are visual, and I have nice groupmates who I can always ask questions. The project is about open air museum consisting a medieval village. The village was mostly dependent of ironworks. Our task is the give information on site (in an interesting way) to the visitor about how the people lived, how the iron was made, how it looked like and so on. Our group has the task of specifically describe the process in the melting oven. A nice and an interesting subject, I think. We are going on Wednesday to the site, so that’s going to be a great field trip. I can borrow a descent camera from a groupmate, so I will post the pictures as soon as possible.

O yeah, Arne and Aduen arrived in Japan. They have some good stories already and nice pictures (which I lack) on their blog. So go & Aduen in Japan" href="http://kyushu.hku.nl/" target="_blank">ahead!