Wonderland Books // Graphic Design Internship

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Design and Marketing Internship for an Independent Bookstore

Wonderland Books is an independent Bookstore and community space in Bethesda, Maryland which will be opening in early December. I had the opportunity to work together with the Wonderland Books team this semester to help them prepare for opening – learning about how an independent bookstore comes together and how to work to solidify and market a new brand in the process. 


I discovered this opportunity through mutual contacts — one of the two 
co-owners of Wonderland Books is a family friend who reached out looking for a bit of help with some of the design work over the summer, and from there I was able to start working with them and their brand designer, who had already created a strong brand identity for the bookstore. I was able to use those brand identity guidelines to help create a wide variety of both print and digital design material for use in-store and online.

Throughout this internship, I was able to create a good amount of work that I’m very proud of, most of which I hadn’t had the opportunity to create in the past. I was able to create design work for social media and online marketing, help work on the Wonderland Books website, create branded merch and marketing materials such as flyers, tote bags, bookmarks, etc., and create a good deal of in-store signage. 


This was a super satisfying experience, as I knew that every single one of these designs would become things that people would interact with — both in-store and online — so I would be able to see how these designs would function in the real world with real audiences. In my opinion, this is one of the most important experiences that an internship can provide me as a student — the ability to see how real, everyday people experience and interact with my designs outside of a classroom context. Working with Wonderland Books, I was able to experience this a lot — and hopefully even more so once the store officially opens! I’m super excited to be able to see how it looks once everything comes together.




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