My name is Young man Chun and I am a rising senior Graphic Design Major. During the Summer of 2017, I was a Magazine Assistant Intern in Print Design department for Consumer Reports, a company based in Yonkers, NY while they have other offices in different cities of United States. I wanted to have an internship during the summer because I think the working experience and design process in real world would be much different than just working on my schoolwork.
I thought magazine company would be great for my first internship experience because magazine design involves every basic graphic design element and I assumed there are many designers who have different roles. I thought I could not learn only graphic design skills from various designers but also how they work together. I found several internships that are related to magazine design in MICA network. I had interviews in several places and I found Consumer Reports that its magazine is mainly focused on basics and grid systems. I chose Consumer Reports.
Consumer Reports is a company that provides information to help consumers to make a best choice for them based on the product testing in its own lab. They have a strict and objective rules. They provides information by magazine and the website. Therefore, designers at Consumer Reports focuses on displaying the information as objective and fair as possible. Their designs are not exaggerated. They follow the basic rules of the magazine design and keep consistent. They still find a creativeness in their structured guideline and keep innovating gradually.
When the internship has started, I found my work. I asked people what I can do for them. I have started with small jobs, such as cutting boards, updating the wall, and small color changes. As I work harder and more, they started to let me actually design one of the magazine. I designed more than 6 sections in the magazine called “Room by Room Makeovers.” I learned how to follow the process of magazine design in their way, including research, presentation to persuade my ideas, and communication with designers, editors, photo retouchers, photographers, and illustrators. I had an opportunity to make my design choices on several spreads and arrange texts and images for the openers even though not all of my opinions were applied and I had to change the design completely sometimes. As they give me important jobs more, I worked more actively and spoke out my opinions more because I feel that they were trusting me. I could be involved in the whole process of the magazine from the beginning to the end. I was very proud of myself when my name was shown in the credit page inside of the magazine.
