My name
is Victoria Cossack and I am a rising Senior Illustration major. During the
summer of 2018, I was a Social Media & Creative Design Intern at POOLCreatives, a small creative talent management agency in the Soho area of New
York City. The way I came into this position was really unexpected: I had been
applying to internships for a while without much luck, when my mom referred me
to a woman named Colleen who she met at an open house (My mom is a real estate
agent, and our house was up for sale). She told me Colleen worked for Walter
Schupfer Management, and that their sister company POOL Creatives was looking
for a summer design intern. I interviewed, we all felt like it was a good fit, and
the rest is history!
Because
POOL is such a small company, I had a really good opportunity to connect with
my team. There were actually only three of us in total-- including me! Delphine
Del Val is the founder, and Kassandra Hannay is the Director of Strategy and
Partnerships. Together, they work with an all-female roster of photographers,
models, stylists, and artists to secure brand partnerships and client work for them.
To explain with an example: If I, as an illustrator, was represented by POOL,
Delphine and Kass might reach out to Anthropologie and connect them with my
work, securing a deal for an illustrated line of bed linen that I would design
for their company.
My role
at POOL was to help out in terms of design work. Delphine and Kass had tons of
exciting ideas, just not the means to execute them visually, which is where I
came in. I worked on product/collateral renderings needed for orders and
upcoming events, created monthly newsletters, and even designed a custom set of
GIF stickers for use on company Instagram stories. The cool thing about working
for an agency is that I kind of got temporary agents out of it... Delphine
would forward me names of companies who were interested in working with me for
their own newsletter designs! Outside of design work, I also got firsthand
experience in the production aspect of partnered events. POOL served as
creative direction for an Armani Beauty event in the Hamptons, so not only did
I get to work on behind-the-scenes designs of collateral (like branded towels
and invitations), but I also got to help out on-site to execute the event. It
really opened my eyes to all the work that goes into these things.
I think
I’m most proud of my ability to assess the company's needs within each
assignment, and meet them in a way that seamlessly incorporates my own creative
skillset. It’s not just about getting your work out there… it’s about doing so
in a way that reflects the company’s vision and intention as precisely as
possible, and then building upon that to take it one step further… It’s like
translating a language, taking an idea and visually executing it. It was great
to apply my illustration work to a field that is very social media based, as it
helped me see how my art can exist here and beyond… it’s very different from
doing illustration for editorial articles or picture books. POOL’s clientele
and overall genre of work turned out to be a really exciting merge of my work,
and my interests in fashion and pop-culture! I think it could really see myself
continuing work in this field, particularly if it means I’m in New York City.
