Hello, everyone! My name is Marco Gallo and this is my first week post for internship class. I’ve got one more semester after the one we’re in now “hopefully” here at City Tech. I’m an illustration and graphic design major with a huge interest in streetwear and apparel design.

I’ve interned at a few places before having come to this internship class. I wasn’t able to take advantage of the class before to get the credit so it’s why I’m here now. In the last few years, I’ve worked as photo-retoucher at a studio, interned at Narrative.ly as an illustrator, and worked on graphic design and social media at The Dumbo Startup lab here in Brooklyn.

I looked long and hard for a new internship before class started. It was about a month and a half of just sending constant resumes and emails to different companies I looked up to. Mostly streetwear companies and other apparel companies. After that, I started reaching out to graphic design firms and I always kept an eye out on sites like Linkedin, Beinbrooklyn, Looksharp, etc. There are a ton of sites to search for internships that are a huge help. One of the issues I ran into is that pretty much every single posting is for unpaid interns. Listen, as a student in New York that doesn’t receive much financial aid if any, has to pay for his own expenses like food, transportation, and pay the phone and internet bills to help out at home. It’s hard as heck to eat it and take that unpaid internship. At the end of the day, I needed the credit for the class and I found a great internship in terms of experience in the field I am interested in. I left the job I was working at the time at Michaels art store as Framer and started interning because I didn’t have the time to intern three or four days a week and go to school full time.

One thing I do have to mention is I give big props to Doctor Summers and Giorgi of Beinbrooklyn.org. I approached them through email because I met Doctor Summers once at a networking event. I emailed them about my internship search and how I was having a hard time. I used the site that they worked for and it was great but I still wasn’t having any luck. They asked for my resume, my interest and what field I’d preferably like to work in and said they’d reach out to specific contacts they had for me. Within a day or two they already had a company that needed someone with my skills and who was related to what I liked. (Thejibslife).

Thejibslife is a start-up sneaker brand based here in New York, NY. They design and sell a casual sneaker that many yoga enthusiast and other gym go’s like to wear on their down time. It also holds a good following with Men and Women in professional settings because it’s a sneaker you can dress up. My job here at Thejibslife is to work on tech packs for manufacturers, retouch and color correct photos for our e-commerce site, design collab logos for work between our brand and other brands, and work on creating content for social media and email newsletters to keep costumers in the know.

It’s been close to a week since I’ve been here and let me say that It’s been great. I’ve been learning new skills for sure, like tech packs. I’ve never personally designed a tech pack and it’s a great skill to learn because most major apparel design companies like candidates to know that skill. It also helps me personal since I am in the process of starting my own brand. (fourshadow.bigcartel.com) <<<[little shoutout].

That’s about it for now. My next post for week two will be on an event that I was lucky enough to attend as my first official day of work here at Thejibslife.