Learning the Importance of Deadlines and Communication

Cottonbro 2020, Hands Typing on a Laptop Keyboard, accessed 22 October 2022, <https://www.pexels.com/photo/hands-typing-on-a-laptop-keyboard-5474294/>

As my internship continues, I have found myself learning a lot about the design industry, the importance of deadlines and the importance of team communication. In this internship, I have had to complete and submit projects given to me by my supervisor every week. Sometimes I would need to complete them by the end of a week and other times, it would need to be completed by the day after it was assigned. In this entry, I’m going to go over how one experience has helped me get a better understanding of how the design industry functions and just how the projects I’ve been given have helped me gain a better understanding of meeting deadlines and communicating effectively with my team.

 

Most of the projects I have been given during this internship were given in advance and I was given a few days to a week to complete each of them. I saw this as both fair and a good way to mimic what a project in a real design job would be like. I already had the idea implanted in me that it was standard practice in the design industry to give a week for small projects like the ones I was given. I believe that being given only a week to do these projects really forced me to focus on time management and make time to work on these projects.

 

However, there was one project I was given where I also realized the importance of deadlines and the necessity of crunching on certain assignments. It was a project where I needed to design 2 articles for the Unity for Equality magazine. I was assigned this project on a Thursday where it was then due the next day. While I wasn’t a fan of this decision, it did help to instill in me the belief that crunch is sometimes a necessity within the design industry. In an industry full of passionate people, everyone wants as much time as possible to make something “perfect”. Sometimes, things pop up and you’re working on an assignment due the next day. I am no stranger to crunch and I’m sure any design student or professional can attest to the idea that crunch is sometimes a necessity within the industry. I believe that if you want to be seen as a reliable worker in the design industry or any other field, you need to be able to work under some amount of pressure without cracking. While it can be tough, it’s a necessity and this project has instilled in me the idea that sometimes, you will need to crunch on projects.

 

Another thing that receiving this specific project has taught me is the importance of communication with supervisors and other team members. After this assignment, I was feeling drained physically and mentally due to needing to spend extra time working on this project. I appreciated the workload but I knew that continuing to receive last minute projects was only going to lead to burnout. After speaking with my professor about the matter, I emailed both my supervisor and the CEO about the workload. I let them know that I appreciated the workload but would need a consistent amount of work being given and consistent weekly deadlines in order to both meet my hours with the class and to create good work. Within the next couple of days, I received an answer from the CEO letting me know that they would be speaking to the supervisor and that I would be receiving work on a consistent basis. I thanked them for this and from this, I realized the importance of communication with coworkers and supervisors at a design job.