Experimental Rap

Photo by Ben Houdijk, Shutterstock


I recieved a brief for an article discussing a new album from JPEGMAFIA called “Experimental Rap”. This was one of the funnest projects I got to work on because I’ve listened to his music before and enjoyed it. I actually forgot that he dropped a new album before I got the assignment so before starting work on it, I went to listened to the album, and the music videos that were produced for it. I found that listening to his music while working on a design related to him helped me focus a lot more, and I’m pretty happy with what I submitted to them. I even made variations for my own purpose.

Stranger Thing: Tales of 85

Photo by Nikita Burdenkov, Shutterstock

This article was about a animated show called “Stranger Things: Tales from ’85”, which is a spinoff from the tv show “Stranger Things”. After releasing season 1, they apparently announced a season 2 almost a week after, and the writer expressed concern on them jumping the gun and becoming similar to Star Wars franchise. For this project, I decided to use the trailer and scenes I saw to use as my imagery for the design, and collage them together.

Gen Z Playlist

Photo from Dragon Images, Shutterstock

For one of my projects, I was tasked to make a design for an article cover talking about how Gen-Z are using playlists as a way of documenting their lives. It was using examples like journaling, photographs, and other memory keeping items to the playlists. It was a pretty interesting brief to work with, and I was able to do research on the different kinds of items they wanted to see.

I learned that I need to have a better idea of perspective, as that is a change that needed to be made as I made the phone as large as the journal I drew. It’s also important to have a non-destructive workflow, since I had to resize and redraw the phone and journal and that caused them to be pixelated. I had to redo them and recolor them. It was a bit of a hassle but I got through it.

Avoiding Copyright in my Work

Image by Teacher Photo, Shutterstock

As I’ve been doing the projects they’ve been giving me at Trill, I’ve had to change the way I obtain images for creating designs. I tend to just go on google and search on the images tab, but that’s not allowed for them. I was given a Shutterstock account to use to find images.

It was a small issue on my most recent work for Trill, an article cover for an article speaking about the Met Gala 2026, and how fashion used to be seen as an artform, and currently is not being seen that way.

I had used an image of one of the participants of this event, but due to it being from another article I couldn’t use it. Using Shutterstock, I found another similar image to replace the one I used, and got it to be accepted

The culture at the workplace

Photo by Summit Art Creations, Shutterstock

Due to the internship being a remote role, I don’t have any face to face interactions with the people I work with. There aren’t any zoom meetings either, they used a combination of Trello, Slack, and Notion to communicate with each other. Trello is the main place where I recieve projects and where they review all the other interns’ designs that work with them. I can say that the writers are on the younger side like me, as this magazine is meant for Gen-Z.

My Role at Trill

Photo by Natee Meepian, Shutterstock

My work at Trill is usually very consistent; I am tasked to create a article cover based on a brief given to me by the editor and the writer of said article. Depending on what category the article is, I make either illustrations or collages using photography.

I started out doing a test project before getting my actual work by selecting one of the articles on their website that hasn’t gotten a collage or illustration made. The work is good practice on how to come up with different compositions while using the same aspect ratio. The canvas size has been smaller than I usually work on due to the nature of the website and how many articles they show at once.

Getting the Internship

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/male-intern-sitting-desk-talking-two-2709887303?trackingId=f9d7df17-bb63-42b7-ad58-dc0222d3ce1b&listId=searchResults

Photo by Dean Drobot, Shutterstock

As the spring semester began to come to its end and me realizing that very soon I’ll need to start thinking about how I’m going to get work in my profession, I started looking for anything that’d help me improve my resume. At first, I felt anxious so I began applying to jobs that I wasn’t ready for or weren’t related to graphic design at all. I took a breathe and backtracked, and looking at the classes I had left before I had enough credits to graduate I saw the internship class.

Since I didn’t want to drown in work from having 7 classes, I decided I’d do my internship during the summer. Using handshake I applied to a couple that might’ve possibly accepted me. Only one gave me a shot, and that was Trill Mag, a non-profit online publication that supports upcoming Gen-Z writers on different topics such as lifestyle, entertainment, and more.

I felt proud of myself, thinking that I can now finally get the ball rolling in my career and get my life in order.