I am Thomas Yang, a Graphic Design senior at MICA. MICA guaranteed a
certain level of artistic freedom, whereas T. Rowe Price taught me the
practical graphic design that a financial company needs.
T. Rowe Price
provided a company-standard rule on color, ratio, and photographic composition.
At first, it seemed cumbersome to me, but because all design projects had
the similar basic format, I was able to make much more progress in a short
amount of time. Learning how to be persuasive through imagery was another important skill
in producing good graphic design work making this internship extremely helpful to me in improving my English as
well as my design skills.
Michael Worobytz, the head of the Motion Graphics and Visual Design of Brand + Creative branch, was my direct supervisor. Every Thursday morning, he
held one on one meetings to talk to interns about their concerns
and stresses at work. Addressing this greatly influenced my relationship
between with the branch.
Although I was not directly in charge of a project during my internship,
I took a supporting role in the project of working on T. Rowe Price's comprehensive brand. I worked on many aspects of
this project from the designing of small business cards to adjusting the visual
elements of web design. As well as designing the bike jersey with the co-branded design of T.
Rowe Price and British Legion and redesigning the previously used T. Rowe Price vector icons and giving them motion. One of the works I am most proud of is the
business card design I did for the Tokyo branch of T. Rowe Price. No one working with me spoke
Japanese and, although at the time I did not speak Japanese very well either, I had a sense of East Asian design layouts. I was also helped by my sister
who can speak Japanese well. This allowed me to take a great role in completing the difficult business card project.
Working as an intern at T. Rowe Price, although for only a brief three months, was an invaluable experience during which I learned many things I
couldn’t learn from school. One example is adhering to the company’s guidelines to ensure unity in all design
products which was an approach completely different from my experience in school where I am free to design to the mood of the
moment. Even more importantly, I learned the best designs are ones my audience find pleasing not just when it looks good to me.
