Source: Unsplash by Robert Bye

So after months of creating newsletters and covers for my internship I finally Sent in my email to let them know I am leaving. With the next school semester being my final I want to do everything I can to have no distractions and to be able to focus just on those final courses. This was my first experience working for a company and I think it was a nice first step into seeing how the real work functions communication with team leaders, quick application of suggestions and advice to fix work that will be shown publicly It’s kind of nerve wrecking at first but that was a hurdle I had to go over if I wanted to ever be a real professional designer. Now I’m just thinking of what to do after graduation I already have plans to move to a new state to get a fresh look at things and to see how design sensibilities are shared and contrasted with how things are done in New York. Before anything else I have to pass my final courses this coming semester that’s the final educational barrier before I can do  anything else with my professional design carrer.

Source from Unsplash by CDC

After 2 years of the world having to live with COVID-19 everyone had to do their part to change and adapt to all the new restrictions being put on us. From the limit to crowd gatherings, everyone being required to wear masks and mandatory vaccines all parts of all industries did their part to fight this disease. In the case of my internship the entire thing is done online through the use of a shared email for everyone in my department and through the use of a messaging program called Rock. While I lose the ability to have in person interactions with these industry professionals it’s still useful for me to have the ability to get in touch with my supervisors at any time of the day. This is also one of the benefits of working in the design industry. Everything is already digital anyway so it’s easier on us to adapt to off site working conditions things are going smoothly because of it so I hope things will continue to go that way for the foreseeable future.

Source from Unsplash by Jason Strull

Going into this internship I was thinking to myself “what haven’t I done yet professionally? What experiences can I only get in the workplace? Well so far the experiences I’ve got from this is working in coordination with multiple people on separate parts of a single large assignment in this case the organizations monthly newsletters after I complete my section I’d send it in for evaluation and soon after get word on adjustments to make so I have to stay on my toes to always be ready to keep working on assignments even if I think they’re done. I’m now in an environment where my work has to be up to par with not just my higher ups but also my peers in real time, I’m now a cog in the professional machine.

Source from Unsplash by Jose Martin Ramirez Carrasco

This week as I was working on my newsletter designs and the topic of Ethics came up at and it got me thinking on the ethics that we as designers and companies owe to our consumers so I looked over my schools data base to see what I could find about the topic and I found an article on exactly by AIGA and as I read it the first thing I found interesting was  What is copyrightable? I had no idea how much went into copyrighting an idea I was always under the impression that as long as you were the first to create an item then the copyright would simply fall under your possession. Next in the Ethics of Design the section about Joe Camel something that was not mentioned about the character is that he was designed to have a very phallic nose as a form of subliminal messaging to give the impression that you would somehow be able to be like joe if you smoked subliminal advertising is also incredibly unethical we should always work to be upfront with our design. Finally when reading this I felt like it had to be said that everyone that takes part in production be it for food, Entertainment, Agriculture ect each has their own ethical responsibility. Designers can’t be held responsible for those in production as we as designers are just putting peoples messages and products out there but those who tell us what to create should be held to the highest ethical standards because they are who the consumer trusts most.

Image source from Unsplash by Linkedinsalesnavigator

Now that I had an internship I had to meet the team that I’ll be working with for the duration of the internship. First I had to have an extended call with the head of the charity for a preliminary interview just to get an idea of me as an individual and as a designer so I put my best foot forward and told him what skills I had what programs I’m experienced with any prior experiences designing I don’t have much outside of school experience but I’ve done enough design work to understand fundamentals and that’s all he really needed. He set me up with the head of the design department and her assistant. We set up workspaces on a platform called Rock for easy communication. We discussed the work I would be doing and I went right to work on pages for the company newsletter.

Image source from Unsplash by Surface

After finishing the initial zoom meeting at the start of the course I hurried to try and get applications out to secure a spot as fast as possible. First I looked over the school’s internship board and I didn’t see anything that caught my attention initially I did finally find a few I liked so I sent out my applications and then was sure to make follow-ups in the following days after that I couldn’t do much but wait. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear from anyone after that but thanks to the help of my professor for this course I was able to secure a spot at a charity. I had no idea what to expect going in because I’ve never done design work at a charity before but everyone was so helpful they had me set up in their organization’s design department and working in no time but this was just the beginning .