My name is Kirsten Young and I am currently a senior graphic design major. Over the course of the summer I was lucky enough to interned at Paperwhite Studios in New York City. During the Spring semester I took Isaac Gertman’s Graphic Design 4 class where we had a whole semester assignment dedicated to Branding. The class showed me how much I enjoyed branding and its systematic approaches. It definitely opened my eyes more to career options in the branding field. During one of our last ‘One on One’ critiques Isaac mentioned an internship at his design studio, Paperwhite, which also focuses on branding. Without any hesitation I told Isaac that I was interested and within that day sent him an email regarding the position with my resume and website. The next day I received an email back from Laureen, Principal of Paperwhite, whom Isaac had forward my email to, saying that I was hired! On the last day of class Isaac told me “Don’t worry, it’ll be fun” and with that I knew he wasn’t going to let me down.
Entering Paperwhite Studio for the first time, I was definitely nervous. A lot of people are nervous on their first day of work at a new job but I was super nervous because I really admired Isaac as a professor and didn’t want to let him down as a intern. I mostly worked along Laureen on various projects, but from time to time I would get other projects from Isaac too. My task would change from day to day. My task included thing such as looking up companies that would print our products in bulk for a good price, to extending a brand’s merchandise to designing a whole book. One of the bigger projects I worked on was for the branding of A.B. Biagi (a gelato store) where I created various ways to extend their brand onto their product. This internship was really a hands on experience, not only did I directly deal with some clients, but I got to see how it was to deal with printers and manufactures of the products. This internship made me feel confident in what I was doing.
Working at Paperwhite was definitely an experience that I gained a lot from. I made mistakes from time to time but all of those mistakes and first time attempts made me learn so much more. Not only did I work on some interesting projects, but I was working alongside some pretty awesome teachers that were able to show me little tips and tricks around designing. My last internship at Hearst Magazines showed me what I wasn’t interested in as a career, but working at Paperwhite really secured my idea of what my ideal future career would be.
