I found out about this internship opportunity through the junior pin-up which was held by the Graphic Design department for juniors. I was approached by a senior designer at Wide Angle Youth Media (WAYM). We talked briefly about my work and they told me that they was interested in my work and we had discussed a potential internship opportunity. They emailed me, and I eventually accepted the offer.
WAYM is a Baltimore Youth-based organization whose mission is to make space for creativity and instill confidence in young people, supporting them to navigate school, career, and life. Within WAYM is a design studio with young designers, and they mostly take on local work around Baltimore. They do a lot of branding and re-brand work.
My direct supervisor role's was to assist other designers and help them with their directions. I spent most of my time working on rebrands and other branding work and spent the rest of my time giving feedback and helping other designers with other small projects. I mostly worked on some internal stuff for WAYM, a personal project: redoing my portfolio, ABF branding, and a cover for Baltimore Beat.
I’m most proud of the pitch I gave for ABF Coaching. I really loved my design and I’m very proud of all the type mixing I’ve been doing.
My biggest takeaway was that no job is “below” you. Initially, I had dismissed working for WAYM because I wanted to work for a more well-known, NYC design studio or agency. I’m glad that I decided to go with WAYM because I really loved the people, I truly learned a lot in a comfortable environment, and I felt like it was the perfect push for growth but also a very welcoming and fun place to work. It’s like the perfect in-between of design school and the professional, instead of the more fast-paced/competitive design studio vibe in NYC.
Through this internship, I learned how to navigate working with and talking to clients, how to work in a design studio setting, how to mix type in a visually compelling way and work as a team with other designers. This internship made me realize that I do want to work for a design studio/agency post-college, and despite loving WAYM, I do want to be in NYC post-college.
