Blog 1
This week I continued my search for an internship. I looked for jobs via Indeed and LinkedIn that fit my interests but many of the jobs were for Summer, required consecutive commitment or open availability, which conflicts with my class and job schedule. I also bookmark The fashionista website periodically posts internship to their careers section. I bookmarked two internships and jobs that fit my career interests.
I have completing an abbreviated portfolio for sending via e-mail with my resume that showcases my work. The portfolio will show logo creation, branding, and typography and will serve at a temporary until my website is completed in my Senior Portfolio class.
Portfolio Progress:
Blog 2
I connected with other classmates and professors from other classes via LinkedIn. I also generated (via chatGPT) and edited multiple versions of different cover letters to send with my applications. I also applied for a paid internship via Intuit for a Hybrid Design Research Internship with pay ranging $42-$45 an hour. I registered and applied to the LifeSci Internship program through the website.
I had the opportunity to attend the LifeSci NYC Internship Informational Session. It was a great session that not only provided an overview of the program, but the variety of opportunities for not just college students, but alumni. Students can choose from different areas that have interests in biology and chemistry research, and graphics and marketing (which is ideal for me). All internships pay from $15-$19 an hour. The presentation also included helpful tips on resume building and how cover letters help applications stand out. The presenter mentioned up to 50% of applicants don’t include cover letters.
We were all sent a recap of the session and a copy of the presentation from the info session. A few days later received a well-organized google doc that contained different jobs from lab assistant to research for a variety of companies.
I completed the PDF digital version of my portfolio, as I continue to work towards adding graphic design to my photography portfolio website in my Senior Portfolio class.
Blog 3
I regularly receive e-mail for LinkedIn jobs and get notifications about specific keywords for jobs sometimes multiple times and review which jobs I qualify for. I discovered quite a few jobs that focus on graphic design and junior art director jobs. I applied for a Design Research Intern at Intuit, which I found via Indeed -for both New York and Atlanta. I also registered for the Omnicom event and sent a copy of my digital portfolio. I also applied to various roles.
I just had the opportunity to interview with an online publication PhotoBook Magazine. I found out about this position through the Fashionista, where I found a previous internship. Fashionista is a fashion and art focused website that includes a job board for LA and NY markets. They regularly send jobs throughout the week via e-mail newsletters containing articles and job opportunities in the fashion and art world.
PhotoBook Magazine is an online sustainable fashion magazine with a great, vibrant aesthetic. The magazine highlights fashion, art, beauty, travel, culture, entertainment and more. This Graphic Design Internship will allow me to work with typography, use brand guidelines, designing tear sheets, to name a few. I am looking forward to this opportunity and the experience I will gain.
Blog 4
My interview was with celebrity stylist and founder Alison Hernon a Celebrity & Fashion Stylist based in New York City. Her career began at Interview, InStyle and Vanity Fair Magazine as a Fashion Stylist Assistant. Alison has styled for celebrities as Rachel Brosnahan, Maria Sharapova, the entire cast of Pose, Penn Badgley, Rose McGowan, Neil Patrick Harris, Veronica Webb and many more. She has done wardrobe styling for many magazines as Esquire, Schon, L’Officiel AU, L’Officiel Baltic, Glamour, As If, Genlux and more.
With twenty-five years of experience, Alison established herself as a force in men’s and women’s fashion. What distinguishes herself from the rest is her ability to surpass client expectations and handle difficult situations with ease.
The zoom interview went very well, thanks to the tips provided from last class. It was very casual and felt more like a conversation. After a conversation about the magazine, my interests, and my career goals I was offered the internship at the end of the interview, gave a verbal yes and received my offer letter shortly thereafter. I will be working with the founder, art director, and other contributors to complete my weekly assignments.
About Alison and her work: https://www.alisonhernon.com/bio
Blog 5
My first week of the internship began with my first meeting with Alison on Monday. The meeting served as an onboarding. Each week we will be meeting Monday mornings to discuss the assignments for the week. I will be creating the tear sheets and other graphics for the website and social media. Interns are provided with easy-to-follow branding guidelines which are updated regularly. The guidelines also contain links to the PSD templates.
After receiving my assignment, I organize the assets into folders. I mostly will be working with smart objects and enjoy using the masks, which have proven useful for assignments in other classes. Assignments are due EOD Friday at 5 and published on Sunday.
My portrait is officially featured on the website masthead.
Blog 6
I attended the Omnicom Health Group information session this week. It was a joint presentation between the COMD department and two HR representatives. The room was packed with students. Omnicom Health Group is a parent agency that has other healthcare related marketing agencies with offices around the world. These agencies service a range of clients including pharmaceuticals, health care, advertisement, hospital systems, advocacy and more.
Other Takeaways:
- The company hold competitions for students and provides internships for students and entry level job opportunities for grads.
- The company also has a variety of DEI initiatives, recruitment, outreach, and employee resource groups.
- Opportunities for graphic design, copy writing, marketing research and more.
- Created a virtual version of their offices in partnership with the Metaverse.
- A variety of resources for learning and development for employees.
- In partnership with 5 colleges including CUNY schools.
- CityTech Students have been notorious for winning past competitions.
- Alumni from CityTech have taken on job opportunities with OHG
Images from OHG Information Session
Blog 7
One week into the internship I figured out how to optimize my workflow for the next several weeks. Monday mornings I am sent my assignments around 8 am via e-mail and google drive link to images for the week to review before we have our weekly meeting. This allows me to organize the files into folders, review image quality, and set up templates. In the discuss the previous assignment and then move forward with the stories. The templates were created in photoshop and are simple to use. These assignments require the use of smart objects and creating masked layers for creating the feature covers. The magazine has a good system in place to find everything.
Assignments are due via an organized google drive link EOD at 5 on Fridays. Although it’s an easy process, it’s important to maintain attention to detail in all assignments before rendering the final images and uploading to the drive. Interns follow the brand guidelines and reference the website to ensure everything is cohesive. After seeing my first assignments posted, I felt good about the work I created (samples below).
Blog 8
My projects consist of working with layers, masks, and smart objects in Photoshop. The templates consist of locked layers of frames, feature name, branding, and smart objects. Smart objects are great for placing images -because they are automatically cropped for the frame. In some of the story covers, a subject or model will overlap the title frame using a layer mask. The select and mask feature works well for some subjects and requires attention to detail for model subjects and hair.
Organization and consistency in file structure is helpful when keeping track of your assets. Before the meeting with Alison, I receive the assignment via e-mail to review assets and image quality. When the image quality is low, I often find hi-res images from links provided in the story and by using google lens (helpful for products). I use the VIP feature in the Mail app to mark the e-mails important. Additionally, I use “color tags” to mark progress and batch rename for images. These features are native to macOS and similar features are available for Windows users with 3rd party software plug-ins like Softorino’s Colorizer.
I create the file structure by making folders, naming conventions, and organizing assets. I also convert e-mail assignment briefing to a PDF and place into weekly folders. By Thursday evening, completed assignment folders are copied into Google Drive and the link is scheduled to send via scheduled e-mail at 8:45 am. This gives ample time to make any corrections before everything is published.
Blog 9
This week’s assignments including creating more tear sheets and making collages of the images provided for the featured fashion and entertainment stories. Although the assignment had been completed, additional corrections needed to be made. Checking for consistency in image sizing and formats is very important for publishing to web, if not, the images will not be formatted properly or will be rejected by the platform. Often the writers are not aware of image quality or file types, and we have request better images.
I received a collection of images for and entertainment story, where one of the images in WEBP and AVIF file type. These formats offer a higher quality compressed image than JPEG. Unfortunately, the squarespace platform does did not accept these file types, I converted and resized to using Photoshop, and exported them using Lightroom classic to create uniformity. Although the additional work had to be done, it taught me how to create efficiencies in my workflow and problem solve under a tight deadline. Before completion, I was constantly in contact with Alison and asking for clarity to ensure we got everything completed. I appreciate her dedication and how she pulled some great problem-solving skills out of me. Never be afraid to communicate your needs and always follow up and follow through, especially if you can’t to get to something immediately. Once everything was complete, I felt a great sense of relief and was pleased with the result.
Blog 10
Building templates, focusing on training, how to write instructions.
A recent assignment I received at my internship required me to create my own template in photoshop. I needed to create a frame to place a grouping of runway and look book photography for a featured trend report. I taught myself to use the frame tool in Photoshop to create frames for the image groups. The frame tool allowed me to customize placeholder frames and create openings by selecting and subtracting pixels from the layer mask. I spent time experimenting with different workflows until I had it perfected and optimized the workflow as I continued to work. I also created instructions on using the frame tool to create custom frames.
A variety of frames were created using layer masks, grouped text layers into folders, and used proper names and tags to find easily.
Link to story: https://www.photobookmagazine.com/features/spring-rtw-trends-2024
Blog 11
I had the opportunity to visit the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum to see “An Atlas of Es Devlin.” This exhibition is a look at the work created by British artist and stage designer, Es Devlin. This exhibition started with a short 4-minute immerse film installation that showed an overview of Devlin’s greatest works and inspirations. I was exposed to an expansive collection of the diverse stage/experience designs created by Devlin. I also learned a great deal about her creative processes with her shared concept sketches, mockups, and miniatures. In addition to crafting dynamic setups for live music performance and art installations, she adapted her work to the changing climate keeping sustainability in mind.
Once the 4-minute film concludes, the walls slide open introducing the layered “iris” as the opening into the rest of the exhibition.
I appreciate this exhibition because I interested in small scale immerse experience design.
Piece 1: 4 Minute film that used multiple projectors that showed the pages turning, without touching them. This was the most intriguing piece, because multiple projectors were set to create the illusion of moving objects and turning pages on a flat surface.
Piece 2: Process books/Mockups: The process books were incredible and very detailed with sketches, collages and mood boards to show inspiration for Devlin’s creations.
Piece 3: Notable state and experience Designs for Beyonce’s renaissance tour, Adele, U2, The Weekend, Coachella, LA Philharmonic, Louis Vuitton, the superbowl to name a few, all over the world.
Blog 12
I have been using an app called Toggl to keep up with workflows while working on my assignments. I set timers to check in with myself and my progress in long increments of 30-45 minutes, and then 15-20 minutes for short assignments or wrap-ups. Although this works most of the time, it does not give me specifics on checking in for specific tasks. These are recorded into a calendar tab showing the time was spent on any given project.
The List feature is more advanced and lets users create custom projects and time them with a stopwatch feature. This can be a helpful tool for working on projects with multiple moving parts or for freelancers that need to time their workflows. It lets you add a project or task name and hashtags.
The “pomodoro” is a simpler focus session feature lets you set timers and break times in custom increments. Once the session duration is complete, you are reminded to take a custom break time and resume the clock after. If needed users can prevent screen lock if enabled in full screen mode. The timer and Toggl controls also show in lock screen to reminding you to focus, take a break or pause the clock.
Toggl integrates natively with Asana, Google Calendars, Adobe Photoshop and XD, iCalendar and more, providing solutions for freelancers, small teams, and enterprise users.
Blog 13
My internship assignments require me to work with photos from design runway and look books. The writers and editors who provides images always include the source, whether it’s an agency image or an independent photographer. Ethical concerns arise whenever an image needs to be replaced, its important the writer and senior editor know so the proper credits can be provided.
Oftentimes the photographer and designer names are listed respectively in the story document or in the file name. Whenever I received a low-resolution image, I am often able to find a high resolution from the links provided in the story. I often used Google lens to source higher quality images from the same image maker, which makes my job a lot easier. If an alternate is selected, I communicate the finding so the credits can be adjusted as needed. Although I am an intern, I always receive credit for the tear sheets I created, along with writers and other contributors.
Blog 14
After my internship, I was able to take the time to reflect on all that I learned during my experience. The 10 weeks seemed long initially, until it came down to the last week. I learned a great deal about time management, working with templates, production based graphic design and even created my own template. I also had to be a self-starter and take initiative during this remote opportunity to star productive and, manage my workloads effectively.
I also learned a great deal working with the Magazine. I learned the importance of communication which comes in handy when working with tight deadlines (especially in the fashion industry). At the last minute, there could be an additional story that needed to be completed at the last minute, images needed to be replaced, and clear communication channels made it possible for me to communicate if I needed additional support or clarification.
As a result of my hard work and dedication during the internship, I received a recommendation letter. Seeing the published results of my work gave me a great sense of accomplishment. I look forward to applying these experiences as I pursue my career and other creative endeavors.
