My name is Nora Mestrich, and I am a senior graphic design major. In the summer of 2016, I interned at Anti/Anti Studio in New York City. This past spring semester I became much more interested in branding and decided I wanted to focus my internship hunt at small branding studios in New York. I searched extensively for small studios to apply to, and worked with my department head, Brockett Horne, to find connections I may have at the studios I was applying to. From there, I sent cold emails and waited to hear back. Anti/Anti got back to me about a week after I sent my initial email and told me they wanted to schedule an interview with me, and since I was already planning on being in New York during spring break, I scheduled my interview for that week. When I went in for my interview I met with the Creative Director Ros Knopov and walked him through my portfolio. I heard back a couple weeks later that I had officially received the internship and began planning my summer in New York!
Anti/Anti is a full branding agency working with a range of clients from Morgan Stanley to BitTorrent. As an intern I got to work on variety of projects such as helping to develop a brand voice and mission for BitTorrent, sit in on meetings with clients, go to photo/video shoots, and just experience the day to day life of the studio. The most exciting thing I took part in this summer was developing a brand identity for the Flatiron Institute. The Flatiron Institute is a branch of the Simons Foundation that had tasked Anti/Anti with creating their logo and brand identity. In the beginning of the summer, I worked on the logo, and after the final logo was approved my fellow intern Bre Della Corna and I were put in charge of creating the entire brand identity. This included identifying CMYK, RGB, Hex, and Pantone colors, creating sizing standards for the logo both in print and on the web, deciding on typefaces and creating standard rules for typography, and creating mockups to show how the logo would live on various deliverables such as hats, mugs, business cards, etc.. We created a 104 page brand book, and while it was a very intense project full of confusing moments and late nights at the studio, it was extremely validating to be trusted with such a large project, and I learned a lot along the way.
After completing my internship this summer I feel exceptionally confident going into my senior year. I can tell my skills have been fine tuned and that I am a stronger designer and professional. I feel like I have figured out the path I want to continue down after I graduate and I’ve made made strong connections along the way, which definitely can help me find a job in the future.
