This past Summer, 2017, I spent my time interning at iStragety Labs in Washington D.C. I learned about this opportunity from Mazzy Bell, one of my classmates who also did the internship the previous year. iSL is essentially a creative agency that creates content for companies on social platforms. This tends to be advertisements and commercials, however, there is another side to the business where they create things like escape rooms, design and develop websites and create physical things with the use of technology at the forefront.
My direct supervisor was Campbell Kawaka. Her title is Senior Art Director. I had very little to do with her the whole time I was interning. That’s just because I ended up working on projects that were more given to Paul Dunbar, another art director. My day to day was largely based on what I wanted to do. I could take upon a project if I had enough time if I was up to date on my tickets. Tickets are these little tasks of finding stock photography and putting the correct logo on it. I despised doing this but at the end of the day, everyone in the company must do a little bit of this every day. Other tasks I was given was to brand a conference for front end developers called Fore_Front. I got to work on shoots, come up with visuals for their blog, work on Kroger projects, help brand the iSL Studios logo and other things.
The thing I am most proud about is developing the brand for Fore_Front. I was given full creative control over the project and I developed and design an identity and website for the organization. I feel strongly about this project and I’m excited because the site is going to be developed by a talented team of developers and I do like the identity I created for the project. The skills I developed were not technical skills as much as they were skills on how a creative agency woks and the process on which something gets approved through the different levels of people. Prior to this job I had no experience in a professional work place that was creative. I’ve had plenty of jobs but none of which were creative so gaining that experience with iSL has been a great thing for me and it will hopefully help me in the near future when I graduate at the end of this next semester.
