During my last week as an intern, I and the other interns finished up the projects we were tasked with. I finished the three projects I was tasked with shown below, starting with Lazzo Bowls needing window signs for bagels and pizza.

After finishing up the two bagels and pizza window signs, I was tasked with finishing up the Susans Kitchen Catering Menu Boards that I was told to do which was the “Lunch Time !” section consisting of 3 spreads or 6 pages.

Finally, my last project of the internship, and it was to create and design a menu board and cover for Punjabi Kitchen Panini Pizza Grill.

I utilized the Tabs feature in Adobe InDesign for my final project and many others since Marla loved and only worked with Tabs in InDesign. I realized why pretty quickly as it made formatting type so much easier, I can lay out all the prices or text in a list format and align the text exactly where I want it to go, as well as apply a legend which in my case is a “.” and it finds the space between the name of the menu item and the price and applies your legend input.

The week after that, I was tasked with designing and formatting the Meet The Cast of the Christmas Pageant Program for Narrows Community Theater.
Marla Gotay is also Vice President of Narrows Community Theater, so this was sort of a fun request from herself. 

I was provided with the list of names in a Microsoft Excel file and bios that you see next to the names in a Microsoft Word Document and was told to design the title with Christmas ornaments and format the names in alphabetical order with fonts of my choice.

I was tasked with editing this Lexington Grill Menu Board, adding a black chalk background, and changing the color of the text that was set from black to white to offset the black chalk background.

I was tasked by Marla with creating 1.5″ x 4″ / 2″ x 4″ signs for Lazzaro Bowls, a client of hers.

The next week entailed designing more restaurant menu boards. Specifically, a restaurant menu cover for Owego Cafe and Grill, as well as Bar & Drink Menu boards for Mas Tacos, which are shown below.

Marla provided me with the Owego Cafe & Grill Takeout Menu and the Mas Tacos Menu Board. I designed the cover page for the Owego Cafe and Grill Takeout Menu, which can be seen above on the right side.

Below is the Mas Tacos Menu Board provided by Marla.

Below is the menu board I designed using assets and inspiration from the menu Marla provided me above. My task was to create a bar menu for Mas Tacos.

I was then told to design a Mas Tacos Drinks Menu, shown below, but I was unable to complete it, due to work piling up and not having enough time to do so.

My first week as an intern was both exciting and overwhelming. I met my supervisor Marla, and co-interns, and they gave me a quick run-down of how things operate around here. There was a lot to take in—new faces, new systems, and new expectations—but everyone was friendly and willing to help. I took notes on everything and made sure to ask questions when I didn’t understand something.

I began feeling more comfortable in my role and we talked about working on my first real project, which was designing a restaurant logo for an Indian restaurant-style cuisine, this made me feel like I was finally contributing to the team.

Marla was supportive, giving me feedback and helping me improve my skills. Each day, I learned something new, and I felt like I was starting to get the hang of things. This was a project that I finished quickly, so I was already tasked with another. First, talks about me designing a website for a theater group was brought up, more on that later. It ended up getting scratched for me to design a breakfast menu for Bread Factory.

Marla approved my design and ended up sending my design off to the client with some final tweaks and adjustments, such as the stroke lines being uneven, font size adjustments, etc.

After receiving this critical feedback from Marla on both my logo design and breakfast menu design, I was quickly tasked with creating and designing a breakfast A-Frame menu sign for a client, the business name, Oxford Cafe.

This project had its challenges… When I first sent the rough draft of the Oxford A-Frame, I was told to put a picture of a coffee cup and a drawn-up arrow hand pointing from the $1 to the coffee cup. Yet, images weren’t sitting right with me, so I took to Illustrator to design a vector coffee cup of my own. The problem I had with that was I couldn’t get the coffee cup to look like a coffee cup, it kept looking like a pill bottle, but with the right adjustments to the color, I finally finished it. Next was the drawn-up hand which was easily finished up thanks to the pen tool.

In the end revised product done by Marla, the coffee cup ended up not being used, but I do now have a valuable asset to include in my portfolio. I learned to not spend too much time on the decoration aspect until I have the layout done. I found myself to have spent way too much time on such a project due to me spending so much time on the coffee cup.

I finally got an email inviting me to my first interview on Zoom! It was Marla from Calling All Graphics! I was told my resume was very professional and just like that without an interview, I would like to be taken on as an intern. I was excited but also nervous about what kind of work I would be given, how I would manage to handle 120 hours on top of my college classes, and what types of people I would be meeting. I prepared by researching, reviewing the blog post again, and asking questions about the company. “This job is where you will learn important layout skills aligning menus and proper formatting of templates for restaurants and other businesses.” This also stuck out to me when re-reading the blog post, I wanted to enhance my skills in this field because I have a lot of family/friends I’d love to support with their restaurants/businesses.

The first meeting with Marla went better than I expected, and I left feeling proud of myself for getting this far. Even if it was an unpaid internship, it was still a valuable learning experience and important for me to continue to build connections and work on my portfolio.

The search for an internship begins with a mix of excitement and nervousness. After hearing from my professors and classmates how important internships are and how many hours I had to complete, I felt pressured to find one that would give me real experience in my field. I started by updating my resume and creating a LinkedIn profile. I scrolled through job boards, and career websites, and asked friends if they knew of any openings. Initially, It felt overwhelming, but I kept reminding myself this was just the start.

One internship stuck out to me the most on the COMD Communication Design Internship Coordination Site, which was Calling All Graphics, especially since in the description, it was noted, “Must have good design skills for interactive menus, flyers, signage, and more.” I sent out an email saying, “I hear you are searching for interns who are both creative and detail-oriented.” and that I have designed a menu website before and have worked with a previous restaurant owner to design merchandise for said restaurant. Hopes were high when clicking send and I was ready to hone these skills, take them to the next level, meet new people, and make connections regardless if the internship was paid or unpaid, which in my case unpaid.

Marla Gotay is the president of Calling All Graphics, a private printing / graphic design/marketing business, with a total of 25+ years of experience in the graphic design and printing industry. Design elements include, but are not limited to menus, menu boards, direct mailers, flyers, posters, signs, logos, and brochures.

Management level skills and normally working in a fast-paced, high-pressure deadline environment. Organized, multi-task oriented, articulate team player with the ability to develop and maintain long-term working relationships with clients and staff for over 25 years.