INTERNSHIP STORIES

The path to my summer internship at URBN started in late October—a good five or six months before I thought I needed to begin my internship search. The first part of the process was to electronically submit a resume, cover letter, personalized mood board for the position you wanted, and a small portfolio selection. As I was applying for the graphic design internship at Urban Outfitters, I kept everything light and fun, allowing personality to overtake the sense of seriousness often associated with resumes. In November I received a call stating that I had made progress in the process, and was invited in for an interview in early January. About a month after my visit to URBN’s campus in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard, I was told that I would be returning in the summer for the internship. Throughout my internship, I worked under Joel Evey, the Print Art Director for the in-­house design team. A majority of my assignments were event posters — individual stores have their own events, and sen...

My name is Natalie Fitzgerald and I’m a senior Graphic Design major with a concentration in Book Arts. I spent the summer of 2012 as a graphic design intern for Cartoon Network in Atlanta, GA. Cartoon Network is a cable television channel that focuses on animated programming for children and young adults. I found the position by searching for places I thought I would enjoy working and seeing if they had internship programs, which many did, and applying according to their protocol. I was especially interested in Cartoon Network because I hope to make a career of designing for children, and because I consider myself an illustrator as well as a designer. Cartoon Network seemed like the perfect chance to do work that would marry the two. My direct supervisor was senior graphic designer Petrika Janssen, but I recieved assignments, feedback, and advice from all six members of the print design and on-air/motion graphics team. I even had many opportunities to talk and work one-on-one with t...

This summer, I was lucky enough to intern with 160over90, a branding agency located in Center City, Philadelphia. 160 is fast-paced perfectionism functioning at its finest. They had me sprinting to keep up, to say the least. My intern supervisors, Jenny Tondera and Doug Richard, acted as the hip and forever-cool Mom and Pop of the Creative Interns. They provided guidance in- and outside of the office. Need help picking a typeface? Need to find a great local bar? Check and check. The two of them had clearly worked to create a program that engaged their interns beyond the normal 9-5 office shift. They assigned me projects until I had proven my work ethic and abilities, at which time the company treated me like any other employee, assigning me regular work directly. For the first couple of weeks, I helped build case studies, run errands, and carry out other small jobs. It was not until another designer at 160 got bogged down with brand concepting (a process that requires 90 hour work ...

I am a junior GFA major and am in the MAT Program. In my major, I have been experimenting with my love of painting and my former love of dance and have been making performance art where these two arts are combined. During the summer of 2012 I was an intern at Shen Wei Dance Arts. They are located in the heart of Manhattan, which is where the company was founded. Because they use dance as more of an art, using the body as the medium, this company has built a reputation for performing a “different” and “unique” form of dance. I was one of five interns who worked closely with the office staff of the company. I found out about this internship in January on a website. I sent in my resume and cover letter and was lucky enough to get an interview with them where I showed them my work and shared my love for theirs. At Shen Wei Dance Arts, I worked in event planning, finances, and media/press to help company run. My direct supervisor was the event planner. She was in charge of running and ...

My name is Ben Sifel, and I’m a senior Graphic Design major. During the summer, I was a graphic design intern for Base Design’s New York office. I worked alongside one other intern from RISD, and three other designers. I found out about Base during one of many internship hunts I had where I basically just went on every possible blog I could for various firms, looking through resume after resume, portfolio after portfolio. I found the work of someone who had interned at Base Design, and I was immediately interested after seeing their work online. They seemed to have a mix of creative work and commercial work that I thought was exciting and could be a productive learning experience for me. I was also really excited by the fact that for having offices in so many different cities (besides New York, they have offices in Brussels, Barcelona, Santiago, and Madrid), it was still a very small and intimate studio. I applied and was thrilled when I was offered the position. From the very fi...

My Name is Rachel Vrankin and I am a senior Graphic Design major. In the summer of 2012, I was selected to work with an interaction design company, Cadmium CD, based in Bel Air, Maryland. This small company creates mobile apps and many other tools to simplify the process of educational conferences for attendees and speakers. I was recommended by a friend to apply, so I submitted my resume and portfolio. I was asked to come in for an interview, during which I showed my work, and was hired that day. My direct supervisor was Peter Wyatt, who owns the company with his wife, Michelle. They oversee everything that goes on at Cadmium CD, and Peter plays an integral role in the design side of things. I mainly worked with Peter and the company's developer, Airyo Shahry. Most of my projects revolved around the company's main product, eventScribe. This mobile app allows attendees to view and take notes on presentations they see at a conference, and a full summary of their activity can ...

My name is Kathe Kaczmarzyk and I’m a junior Painting major with an Art History minor. During the summer of 2012, I interned for a cashmere knitwear company in New York City called Christopher Fischer Cashmere. I found this internship through my father, who does custom woodworking and has worked with the company several times building furniture for their offices and stores. I interned at Christopher Fischer last summer and secured it by meeting with the vice president of the company, Charlene Kuo, and discussing my skills and what I could help out with for the summer. Upon returning this summer, I proved myself to be a valuable and hard worker, and was encouraged to come back for this summer and help the designers and become more of a design intern. Christopher Fischer Cashmere is a knitwear fashion company located in the heart of the fashion district in NYC. Many of the workers there are British and the company’s roots stem from the United Kingdom. They are a high-end company whe...

My name is Alayna Citrin and I am a sophomore Graphic Design major with concentrations in Books Arts and Sustainability & Social Practice. During the summer of 2012, I secured an internship at Rand Diversified, working as a graphic design intern. I found the opportunity through my neighbor, who works in the marketing and sales division. He helped me set up an interview with the creative director, Rob Dudzinski, after which I secured a paid internship for the summer within the design department. Rand Diversified creates point-of-purchase (POP) displays for companies to promote and sell their products. They are involved in many areas of design, including the creation of 3D models of the displays, the designing of the artwork and imagery, and the printing of comps for clients. Rand is unique because with its two manufacturing plants located in other parts of the country, it is often able to follow each project through from conception to distribution. I worked with the creative dir...

My name is Michael Bussell and I am a junior Photography major. My internship took place in Chicago at Thomas Robertello Gallery. The gallery was established in 2006 and shows emerging and mid-­career contemporary artists. My supervisor and director of the gallery, Thomas, informed me during our interview that he would be out of town for the first two weeks of my internship and that my introduction would be provided by his gallery assistant, Aaron Smith, who interviewed me as well. He showed me how the art was packaged and stored, as well as how the gallery communicated with artists, other galleries, curators, museums, and writers/publications. When Thomas returned, I began photographing installation documentation of the show as well as project space, which included detail shots that were also used on the website in place of his original studio photos that were up. The project space was particularly challenging to photograph as it was very small, but it provided a good introduct...

My name is Aimee Fleck, and I’m a senior Illustration major. During the summer of 2012 I interned with Ben Dale, an independent comic writer and artist, in his studio in Brooklyn, New York. I learned about the opportunity from my previous semester’s "Advanced Sequential Art" instructor, Joan Hilty. She knew Ben and was aware that he was looking for a studio intern to help him with his work, and when I expressed interest she put us in contact. After e-mailing back and forth about the details of the internship, I was hired and made the arrangements to move to Brooklyn for the summer. Ben was working towards finishing and publishing a young adult fantasy graphic novel, a project he had been working on for nearly a year. I was hired to help lay in colors on otherwise-finished pages. I spent six hours three days a week digitally ‘flatting' pages, which means coloring the images with solid blocks of color that could later be selected and modified. I worked alongside him i...

Hello, my name is Alexandra Caivano and I am currently a junior in the process of changing majors from GFA to Fibers. Part of this decision is due to the internship I completed this past summer at ABC Carpet & Home in New York City. I was one of two interns who were part of the Visual team. I found this internship through a friend whose sister works at the company, and I went into the city as soon as I could when I was invited to an interview and portfolio review. I was offered the internship on the spot. I actually did not accept the internship right away because I had another interview at Jonathan Adler, but in the end I chose ABC (though I might intern for Jonathan Adler in the future). ABC Carpet & Home is one of the premier interior decorating companies in the country and has been in business since 1897, when they only sold carpets. Since then the company has expanded dramatically, and focuses its attention on sustainability, fair trade, and products with a cause. Over...

My name is Jessica Yun-Tien Wen and I am a junior Graphic Design student with a Book Arts concentration at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). During July in summer 2012, I interned at RiXing Type Foundry in Taipei, Taiwan. It was a solid month of brand new experience concentrating on traditional Chinese typography and letterpress. As a graphic design student here at MICA, I learn about detailed typographic rules and the skill set for English typography, and constantly work in the digital format. However, I have always wanted to have more hands-on experience with typography in my native language and culture, Chinese/Taiwanese. The experience of interning at RiXing turned out to be exactly what I wanted, and I am really grateful for what I saw and experienced during that month. My first encounter and visit to RiXing was back in summer 2011, and it was an eye-opening experience. The letterpress system with which I am familiar here in the States contains only 26 letters in ...

My name is MaryElise Collier and I am a junior Fibers major with concentrations in Illustration and Experimental Fashion. This summer I interned at the Albany Brass Ring Carousel in Albany, Oregon. I live in the next town over, and some family friends mentioned I should check the carousel project out. I visited the studio during winter break and asked Tyson Brown, the volunteer coordinator, about internship possibilities. The carousel operates almost 100% on volunteers and will take most anyone who really wants to learn to carve and paint, so setting it up as an internship went very smoothly. As an intern I started by carving a pineapple, which helped me learn the process. I quickly carved two pineapples and Jack, the lead carver, deemed me good enough to move on to a ‘hobby horse head’ of a quagga, an extinct species of zebra. That took much longer, nearly a month, to carve, but it was a great experience and I learned a lot from it. It was an exercise in turning 2-D images into a ...

My name is Caitlin Cawley and I am a current Graphic Design major. During my freshman year, I completed an internship at an advertising company and afterwards began brainstorming where I would like to have my next internship. Life is Good, a company I grew up with, was one of those on my list. I am a fan of their page on Facebook and noticed that they had recently posted job positions for graphic designers. Although there were no internship postings, I still decided to email my packet containing my resume, a cover letter, and samples from my portfolio to the contact listed. I heard back immediately; however, there were not going to be any internships for graphic designers that summer. The Human Resources representative included information about an internship for apparel designers and thought that I may be interested. I set up a phone interview with the two designers I learned I would be working alongside. After the interview I knew for certain that it was an internship I really wanted...

My name is Bo Ra Kim and I am a senior Environmental Design major with a Graphic Design concentration. Over the summer of 2012 I interned at Ashton Design, a graphic design studio that produces brochures, college admissions and development publications, websites, environmental graphics, and even prototypes for public sculpture. I found this internship opportunity from Brockett Horne, the chair of graphic design at MICA, who knows my interest in Environmental Graphic Design. I submitted my resume, cover letter, and portfolio to Jenny Hoffman, the creative director at Ashton, and had an interview with Ronald Younts, the principal and design director. At Ashton Design, my projects included working on a poster card, designing environmental graphics, and creating graphic design mock-ups. I especially enjoyed the environmental graphic design projects, which are unique from anything I have worked on in class at MICA. It is the perfect blend of my dual interests in Environmental and Gra...

My name is Matt Oliva and I am a junior Art History and Photography major. I was one of two s ummer 2011 photo archive interns at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore, a position I found through MICAnetwork and the Museum's website. After submitting a ream and cover letter, Rachel Kassman, the Photo Archivist at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, requested a phone interview and I was hired about a week later. The Jewish Museum of Maryland is located in Jonestown, Baltimore, the historic center of Jewish life in the city. Its mission is to preserve and tell the story of Jewish life in America, with particular focus on Maryland. The museum property includes two historic synagogues, and its collection consists of thousands of objects, documents, and photographs that were made, owned, or used by Maryland Jews. The breadth of the collection allows the museum to paint a fascinating and complete picture of Jewish life in America over the past two centuries. My projects as Photo ...

When I first applied for this internship, I had no idea what I was getting into--all I knew was that I would have to drive two or more hours three days a week to DC, and that I was going to work with this fantastic photographer, Frank Hallam Day. On my first day of the internship, Frank put me right to work with editing images that he was going to later hand out in packets during his travels to Europe to accept his Leica Oskar Barnack Prize for his series of RV Night photographs. I spent many, many, many hours of the day just staring in front of the computer screen editing photographs, designing templates in InDesign, and printing and reprinting these images until they were perfected to Frank's liking. I was so surprised how much he trusted me right away with these images that had won him an award; I thought it would have taken him some time to trust me with my editing skills because I have never really edited photos to the extent that he does. He did help me along the way wi...

My name is Christina Dacanay and I’m a senior Illustration major. Over this past summer I was an intern for an artist agency called Shannon Associates in New York. One of my teachers at MICA, Alan Comport, worked for them for a number of years and directed me to them during the school year. Shannon Associates represents over 100 illustrators worldwide and they’re responsible for connecting clients to artists, managing the contracts and finances, and promoting the artists. I shared an office space with Simon Bollinger, a senior artist agent who has worked at SA for nearly 20 years as both an agent and chief financial officer. My responsibilities initially included graphic design work for all the printed promotional material for the represented artists, uploading portfolios, and key wording. As I was able to showcase more diverse skills, I was set to the task of setting up, improving, and managing SA’s Internet presence on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Behance, and a number of...

My name is Morgan Cady-Lee and I’m a senior Photography major with a Video and Film Arts concentration and a Literary Arts minor. Over the summer I interned for a small projection company called Dawn of Man, which consists of three main people. They install projections for events, gallery openings, museums, and creative projects, and in many cases are also in charge of the video content. I was introduced to Lucas Flores Piran, the digital media manager at Dawn of Man, by my uncle’s boyfriend who thought that it might be an interesting opportunity for me. I was interested in the content creation and video editing that the internship would entail, as well as the fashion photography that Lucas works on independently from Dawn of Man. Much the work I was given involved editing for their content and their promotional videos, which described what their company did and the types of clients they have had. One such video I worked on was of a MoMA garden party. Other times I in charge of ed...