Studio Rodrigo

I’m Juliette Wang, a rising senior Graphic Design student. For 2018’s summer, I was a Design Intern for Studio Rodrigo, a product design agency based in New York. They produce various work from products, marketing websites to branding; clients include Adobe, This American Life, Serial Podcast, Comcast, ABC News, xfinity, and more. Studio Rodrigo is most focused in helping companies identity and evaluate product opportunities, developing strategies, and designing and bringing new products and services to market. I became aware of Studio Rodrigo last summer so this summer I decided to apply for the internship. Hieu Tran, my professor and good friend, interned and worked at Studio Rodrigo last summer so he mentioned me to Rodrigo as they were looking for interns. I also met them in person at MICA Career Fair and after, I sent a carefully composed ‘cover letter’ email to Rodrigo with my resume and portfolio website. After a couple of days, I got an email back from the Creative Director for a call to meet more of the designers. I went through my projects, asked question and answered questions and they told me more about Studio Rodrigo. Then two weeks after, I got an email back about my offer and I accepted it a day after.

Depending on the various projects I worked on, my direct supervisor shifts depending on the Design Lead. But I worked closely with Jon Chonko where he lead my main project, Preferred Return and various different smaller projects. He is a senior designer and design director of Studio Rodrigo and gave me various tasks, projects and feedback. We also reported to Ritik, who manages the whole studio and reaches out to client directly and sits in meetings. For one of my main projects, Serial Season 3, I reported directly to Khoi Uong who was the creative director of Studio Rodrigo.

I worked on several projects in the three months that I was at Studio Rodrigo. The responsibilities and projects includes producing socials for TurboVote, designing various brand, web and products for Preferred Return, producing a banner and presentation PRX, redesigning the website and pages for Serial S3, designing and updating posters for 4 for 40 and creating concepts for Spell. The two main projects that I’ve worked and are most proud of is Serial Season 3 and Preferred Return, where a lot of my designs and concepts got approved and produced. Serial Season 3, I got to redesign all the different pages and various elements that is used on the website. For Preferred Return, I got to help produce their report, completely deliver their logo, brand styleguide and collateral, produce various of their web pages and helped out with elements of the product. I was proud of all the work I got to do and work on, especially those that are liked by the other designers, finalized and shown to the clients and sent into development.

The various skills that I’ve picked up includes technical skills such as compiling a deck for presentation, compiling a brand guideline, preparing final files to be sent out, as well as personal skills like thinking critically about the product and designing for functionality, talking to clients, listening for feedback to improve on work. I also learnt a lot about product design itself and how resizing it for screen works, the various screen resolutions, the specific spacing in pixels, and the rules and patterns that UI/UX is needed. I definitely learnt a lot about the process of producing a website and the little details we have to be aware of.

My biggest take-away from this internship is to experience various different companies, explore different jobs and have fun when I’m young. I also realize that I cant imagine myself not working digitally as I’m working so much on web and product and really enjoy it. An important thing I learnt was that I get excited about making products but I’m not sure about working in house but I’m excited to see what that would be like.