Hello, I’m Ariana Dejesus, a Communication Design major at New York City College of Technology.
This blog is meant for you to be able to follow me on my Spring 2023 internship journey!
A little bit about me
I’m focusing on advertising, but I have experience in brand identity design, package design, photography, and animation. I’m skilled in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere and Lightroom. I can also read in Korean. I’m very interested in learning how to make better animations, so I’m in the process of learning how to use Blender as well.
Getting the position
I began my search for an internship early, around November 2022. Through City Tech’s internship site, I found a great non-profit. They focus on assisting teens and adults with disabilities gain job-readiness skills through equine-assisted learning. I reached out via email with my resume and a cover letter, which lead to a virtual interview about a week later. During the interview, speaking with the two future supervisors felt so easy. They hired me right after the interview and we went straight into getting the paperwork completed. I was all set by Thanksgiving, giving me a chance to focus on the remaining classes in my Fall 2022 semester.
Tasks So Far
For my first week, we listed a lot of ideas we could possibly get to by the end of the internship during our meeting. I was offered to take a one hour, online workshop held by a designer CEO of her own creative agency for food, beverage, and agricultural brands. She gave insight on how to set attainable goals for your company and then make a plan to reach them. It was a good start to the internship because it helped get my thought process shaped into what would benefit the non-profit more.
With the workshop, more research was to be conducted during the week. I looked into direct competitors, similar non-profits, and more social media managing strategies. I’ve had internships before, but this is the first time I’m dealing so closely with a company’s social media, so I’m determined to see how much I can help them grow.
Their anniversary is approaching! We touched on this during the interview phase, so it seems that this will definitely be where their focus lies for now. To celebrate and create an announcement, I planned on creating an Instagram carousel post since they had never posted one before. I began working on sketches for the layout for this along with following other nonprofits, larger organizations, either equestrian/farm related or disability related, and checking hashtags for what is popular.
