Category: COMD 4900 Internship

Being a part of a group effort for a project is a difficult task. Not mentioning that this is also a remote experience for me. Many of the other interns are remote as well. This has its pros and cons. Most people are happy that they don’t have to commute to go into the office, which is a bonus. But the downside to this is that the remote experience doesn’t help with explaining things at times. For example, using Adobe programs is much easier to explain when you are in person than on a Zoom call. The way you show someone to use a program is much more effective if you are in person with them.

There was this one assignment that required me to work on creating a mockup for a website. The request was to try to make it as a replica of the website. The issue with doing this was the amount of text they gave for us to include. One of the challenges was that I was working with a partner, and they had a hard time trying to align text onto the baseline in InDesign. As we are on Zoom, he was trying to fill in one of the pages, but was struggling to do so. As the text didn’t align from one paragraph to another. I shared with him what I do to get to the baseline grid to snap, but in the end he didn’t have that option on his InDesign’s program. Took us a few minutes to figure out what was the issue, it was that his shortcut key didn’t work, but opening it in the settings for the baseline grid shows up. It was also difficult as he was using a MacBook, and was in their campus’ cafeteria. Making it difficult to hear him clearly and that the operating system is different from the Windows computer that I use. The keys are slightly different, as well as differences in shortcuts in InDesign.

Overall, the way the internship is set up remotely makes it harder at times to collaborate with each other. But the pro is that people are more flexible with their scheduling as they don’t have to commute to be in person.

It comes with no surprise that when you are on a team, you are bound to have different ideas and different knowledge in a particular topic. One of the biggest themes about working with an organization that is primarly helping people with special needs is that there is an importance of being inclusive. As there aren’t many people with formal training in the internship about the disability community, it was important for me to learn more about this. Many well known areas would have good inclusive access for the disabled, but many places in New York City do not have that access.

Part of the internship is to identify what the city could be improving to be more accessible. One of the projects we had was partnered with the Historical House Trust. One of the issues with HHT is the fact that they are lower budget than something like MoMa (Museum of Modern Arts), the lack of fundings, workers and acknowledgement makes it more difficult to assess what it is missing for a more inclusive access for the disabled community. 

One of my favorite things about the internship is the ability to communicate. I get to meet spectacle artists. The disabled community is well versed, they have motivating goals and aspects that for a graphic designer, I am very honored to work with. They give aspects where I didn’t think were possible. Amazing people in this amazing community is what gives me a good smile. They make it so positive, in a world where there are a lot of negatives and bad interpretation towards disabled communities.

When it comes to responsibility, us interns have different tasks that set up a bigger picture. Being a graphic design student, I would love to work on graphical things. But in hindsight, it isn’t as black and white to just assign graphic things all the time. There are many times that require copywriting. Being a graphic design student, we get to learn more differences in our audience as we are learning how the market works in a different approach compared to other fields. Although we have our set skill sets as interns, we weren’t showcasing it completely as it was an interview, and we haven’t got to work with each other to learn our work styles and our personality as humans.

One of the interests I have is motion graphics, in the field of graphical design works. When the supervisor and the other workers in the weekly meetings, we have discussed what we want to move forward towards. It was in great interest for me to emphasize on what I would like to get done, as it helps me as an individual and have work that is impressive for ABS as well. I spoke about having interests in motion graphics, such as video editing. Later on in the internship, I was tasked with an older intern that has been there for a few months prior, and we connected over and started working on a video project where we interview artists and make a video with clips from all the interviews to showcase a collage collaboration.

With this in mind, I am excited about what kind of tasks will be assigned to me. The steps of having the conversation with the supervisor is helping me grow as a whole. I am getting out of my comfort zone to let them know what I would prefer to work on during my time with my internship.

Second part of the journey of internship is getting to know more about what I am working for / towards. Although the description and the interviews filled in a lot of the gaps about special needs, but there were so much more to unravel. It was an appeal for me to get in, as I have family members that have disabilities and navigating through the performances and arts is one of life’s wonders. Being inclusive is important in this regard. Having people appreciate the works of disability communities and individuals that create creative pieces.  

There are other interns in this internship. They are from CUNY as well, but from all over the boroughs. They were all hand selected to be a part of the organization, following through the same procedure for interviews. The organization has many connections that are connected to them. They work with the government, individual artists and big tech companies such as Google. Their services provide for museums, galleries, cultural institutions and arts organizations through partnership opportunities, training sessions and inclusive environment assessments, inclusive technology assessment and feedback, user experience research, and ongoing consulting options.

Overall, the organization provides a lot of good into society. I am honored to have this engagement with their organization. Helping others and the community is a wonderful experience to have. I hope to get more insight and learn more about their operation.

The first journey of an internship starts with finding an intern. Honestly, this was probably the hardest part of the journey. There were too many options out there, the anxiety of the what ifs comes up. I personally didn’t have a too polished resume, let alone a proper looking portfolio to showcase my work. Being a part of CUNY, there are opportunities that I took advantage of. One of these came in the hands of the Cultural Corps from CUNY. I was able to get into the Cultural Corps. Within that time frame, applying to internships were a lot simpler. The interviewers know a bit more about you in general, being a part of CUNY and having a safety net of Cultural Corps, as you would need to be accepted into Cultural Corps to get to interviewers.

My personal interviews with the interviewers went smoother than I expected. At first it was very high intense anxiety. As it went on, the process got more natural for me. There was less fright, less stutters and most importantly, I felt a lot more confident. Setting the mood to be easier for myself and the interviewers was insightful. Most of the interviews followed standard interview questionnaires. I was practicing and using resources online, such as the one from Business Insider, about The most common questions hiring managers ask during job interviews. The little prep work allowed me to answer questions that were less expected. But having reviewed some of the questions, the curve ball is less of a hassle. 

Overall, the interviewing and getting accepted to Cultural Corps was an amazing opportunity for myself. But I wouldn’t have gotten this offer without the help of other students, they were the ones that informed me about this program from CUNY.  The best part about all of this, is that I got accepted to the intern I was most interested in, this was a non profit organization that craters to special needs. Their agenda was the first thing that was catching my attention when I saw their info. Being able to get interviewed by them through Zoom. I was able to understand their organization and how I could be a part of their operation to sharpen my skill set and provide a service to the community.