My name is Nicole Farhan and I’m a graphic design major. I always wanted to get into editorial design and all year I interviewed MICA alumni and checked websites for internships in New York specifically for magazine design. I applied to so many but got called back for InStyle and Redbook. I felt much more comfortable with the interview at Redbook. I grew up reading it so I knew this was the right internship for me.
My responsibilities were basic assistant work like printing certain spreads, covers and copying inspiration for them but they also let me design a lot of spreads using the templates they had. It was certain spreads that had basically the same layout each month but may have different pictures of colors that I got to choose. I also attended many meetings with the design team and ones with the whole magazine team. I also attended photoshoots to learn more about fashion photography.
The biggest take away from this experience is that magazine design is very fast paced. It’s hard to have a lot of creative freedom because Redbook uses a lot of templates, and unless you are designing a feature the designs are very similar every month. I think that if I were to get into this field I’d want to work with music rather than fashion. I also think that it may be too fast paced for me because I like to take my time with designs and they sometimes needed me to be as quick as possible. I may look into package design or something with rock music. This doesn’t necessarily mean I dislike editorial design, I just need to find the right magazine to work for.