Washingtonian Magazine

After connecting with a fellow GDMFA colleague at MICA, he offered me an internship opportunity at Washingtonian Magazine. Publication and Editorial design were something I was interested in, so I decided to pursue this internship

Washingtonian Magazine publishes monthly magazines highlighting information and events about and in D.C. My GDMFA colleague was my supervisor and is also the Creative Director at Washingtonian Magazine. As an art fellow/intern, I would report to him during our morning and end-of-day meetings, and he would give me feedback and critique the assignments and current projects. My responsibilities were to assist with design projects by creating and preparing mood boards, collecting swipes or images for research, researching typefaces, illustrations, and logo designs, and designing iterations and series of spread designs about the topics. I also had the opportunity to create spot illustrations for a project. 

I am proud that I learned something new every day at my internship like new terminology and design skills. Most of all, I am proud that I was able to make new connections and meet other designers in the industry. I also wanted to gain more confidence and not be afraid to make mistakes. Even after a challenging task that I wasn’t great at, my supervisor still gave me a second chance to help me improve. During the second time, I understood the assignment and knew what I needed to do to improve or not make the same mistake.

New skills I have learned are things specifically in the editorial design world, for instance, photo essays. During the end-of-day meetings with the creative director, I learned a lot from the lectures and detailed explanations of the design assignments. He explained in detail what to do with photos and captions, what not to do with professionally taken photos, such as cropping or resizing them, how to work with a whole body of text on two spreads and how to balance images throughout the pages.

This internship has helped me understand my skill sets and showed me where I need to improve and what, and also encouraged me to pursue deeper into publication and editorial design. I was also able to make more connections and learn about the difference between a studio and a company/agency. I better understand what type of working environment I wish to look for and work in in the future.