Ebony Derrick’s ePortfolio

This week the students designed their own tee shirts using markers to create their designs. They used blank white tee shirts as a canvas for this project. I handed out the materials they’d need along with a piece of cardboard that would be placed on the inside of the shirt to prevent the ink from leaking onto the back of the shirt.

After handing out the materials, I explained to the students that they’ll be designing the shirts that would best represent them and their styles. The students had various colors and could research for references. Most of the students created designs based on how they were feeling while working on their projects. The other set of students created designs that were similar to graphic tees that also represented them.

One student in particular like to be very vocal, she created her tee shirt based on how she reacts when she’s in different moods and feelings. Her tee told a story through just drawings. Another student created her tee shirt based on an insect that she likes, she created a human character of how some types of moths would look like in human form. After they created their tees, they were able to gift them to someone else in the program or take it home.

During the first week of my internship, I started to get to know the students that I will be working with throughout my internship. I will be working with 75 students, each day will be small groups of 15 to 20 students. Most of the materials that I will need for the projects have already been purchased. Other materials that I will or might need will be purchased by the site director or my supervisor. I also had to do training based on safety hazards, safety in the classroom, where to go during a fire drill, and what to do when there are projects that may use hazardous materials.

Every two weeks I have to email my supervisor lesson plans and materials that I’ll need for the upcoming two weeks. If there are materials that need to be ordered, I would send a list of them to the supervisor with the dates I’ll need them for.

My name is Ebony Derrick and I’m a lower senior in the Communication Design Major. I will be graduating after completing the Fall 2023 semester. Throughout being in the Communication Design major, I’ve learned a lot from drawing to painting to learning different digital techniques and more. This is my first internship, I intern at an afterschool where I teach kids between the ages of 10 and 14. I teach them art, design, and work on DIY projects with them. I started my internship at the beginning of the year.

As I work toward my goal of being a graphic designer, I believe that working with a younger age group will challenge me more compared to working with clients or others around my age group and older. I learned that working with clients from 10 to 14 years old cause me to be more creative and work on projects with them that allow me to be more thoughtful of more than 5 possible outcomes on projects that I work on with the students.

Throughout the first week of my internship, there were days when it ran smoothly and there were days when there were bumps in the road. The problem that I faces was coming up with projects that would be hands-on and the time frame that the students would receive information about the projects would be within a 5-minute presentation or time frame before losing their attention. Throughout the week, I did an experiment to see how I can catch the students’ attention. I learned that if I make a presentation where I start by showing examples of the final projects then they’ll be more interested in how to do it and I’ll be able to give them the information they need for the projects without rushing.