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. 

Hamiltonian Artists

Hamiltonian Artists' mission is to build a dynamic community of innovative artists and effective visual art leaders by providing professional development opportunities and advancing their entrepreneurial success. Through a two-year fellowship program they produce group shows and solo shows to help build a solid foundation for emerging artists. A professor from one of my courses works at Hamiltonian Artists and reached out to me at the end of the course if I would be interested in an internship.

During my internship I would report back to my supervisor with tasks I was assigned to and we would discuss program planning for the future. I was involved in a variety of projects like managing donor and board member Thank You letters and learning about the Bloomerang database. I also helped plan programs for kinetic members which is a sales and lending program on cultivating the next generation collectors. The mission of the program is to connect artists and collectors in such ways as conducting studio, managing collections, and creating a more approachable art collection environment. Finally, a big part of my jobs was installation and openings of exhibitions and the day-to-day gallery management.

My biggest takeaway from this experience is understanding how to present myself as an artist and how to represent the organization in the broader art world. I got to be in touch with a board of members, gallerists, artists, and people who are passionate about art in general! I overall understand better how the fine art industry runs and how to make art more accessible from a curatorial perspective. I now understand how non-profit galleries run and I am proud to have been involved in the DC art scene.

This internship experience has helped me to deepen my understanding in ways of supporting artists, especially emerging artists and made me more certain that the care for artists is what I want to carry on in my curatorial practice.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

 I had the honor of interning with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as an animator, creating an animated film that will be a part of the temporary exhibit Cellphone: Unseen Connections that opened up in June 2023. The exhibit discusses everything from how cell phones are made from raw, earthly materials to how we can help the environment by repairing our phones instead of constantly replacing and upgrading them.

My biggest takeaway from this experience is that working with a professional team for a creative project is incredibly valuable and fruitful, as every member has something very different to offer and their own unique perspective. I also appreciated how much everybody genuinely cared about the message and purpose of the film. When working collaboratively, the most important thing I learned was how to translate the core team’s ideas and words into visuals that they approve of. They helped me push my own ideas and also gave me some of their own to work with and visualize.

Some new skills I have required through this internship are communication, time management and improving my drawing and animation skills. I have grown a lot in communicating in a professional environment, through emails with my supervisor and also in the group meetings. I can better explain my ideas and artistic thought processes to the group and clarify their requests. I have also improved in time management, now having experience with professional deadlines. 

This internship has helped clarify my career goals because it has given me a truly professional work experience that I want to be a part of. For the first time I am creating an animation for someone that is not myself or a school assignment. I now know what it is like to have these deadlines, feedback, critiques, scripts and meetings that are solely about the animation. I love the whole process and am reassured that this is what I want to do in my career. I truly enjoy working with others and bouncing off ideas with a team. I greatly enjoy a client, manager or supervisor telling me what they want me to animate and translating their wishes into the desired product. It is very exciting to me. I am so thankful for this opportunity!

Polygraph Creative

Polygraph Creative is an award winning design studio based in Washington,D.C. that specializes in branding, product, editorial and environmental design. They have a reputation for finding truth and authenticity in their work by fusing creativity, passion and craft into their creative decisions.

Due to the lengthy and competitive nature of finding a summer internship position, I sought advice from my department chair. She recommended several local design studios and agencies, one of which was Polygraph Creative. Their website did not list any open positions, so I did not expect to receive a response to my cold email. However, one of the principal designers happened to stumble upon my recent packaging project on MICA's Instagram account and recognized my name upon reviewing my email. He replied a day later, and I went in for my interview soon after with my physical portfolio in hand. The next afternoon, I received the official offer and was welcomed to become part of the team. While working with these talented designers, I discovered that Polygraph’s love for the poetic stems from their appreciation for design that starts its journey outside of the computer. 

Each day varied as I worked on many different projects for several companies. My responsibilities ranged from designing graphics for product and environmental spaces, to creating artwork that would be used to create identity systems. In addition, I was introduced to branding for the food and hospitality industries. I experimented with pattern making and fine tuned my skills in typography. I learned how to integrate my love for analog art and design with functional logos and identity systems. Aside from acquiring skills in conceptual design and overall career skills, I also learned new technical skills in photoshop and indesign. I became more confident with laying out large areas of text, using Pantone colors, making my own mockups, overall communication, photography, and word play.

One of the highlights during this internship was my opportunity to create abstract artwork for the Washington DC National Portrait Gallery. To my delight, my work was approved for their 2019 gala brochure cover and inner panel design. I was also proud to be able to create patterns and original artwork that would be used for the identity system of a hotel. It was so encouraging to have real clients be excited about something I created.
This summer, my taste in design was elevated to new heights because of the time spent with top caliber designers and artists. The line between good and bad design has started to become clearer. My experience as an intern at Polygraph Creative was an incredible opportunity that helped open my eyes to the design world. This exposure has enabled me to feel more prepared to tackle the beginning of my career, as well as help highlight areas to work on during my final year at MICA. 

National Museum of Women in the Arts

I found out about this internship as I was scrolling through the website for my school work. The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) holds a strong place in my heart, but I never thought about interning there as it doesn’t have a connection to my major. It was a stroke of luck that I manage to secure it as I found it three days from the application deadline date. My amazing professors were extremely kind and helped me write a letter of recommendation (I found out later it was my letters of recommendation that pushed me ahead of everyone else). Otherwise, using the 3 days, I asked as many people as I could to read through all my materials, including Career Development and my Academic Advisor. 

NMWA in Washington, DC champions and supports women artists. It is the only museum in the world solely dedicated to women artists. They feature a variety of art forms, mostly focusing on contemporary art. The department I worked in was Digital Engagement, this applied to all social media platforms, website, photography, all online activity. My direct supervisor was the director of Digital Engagement. As NMWA is quite small, her role encompasses almost everything related to the department other than website coding. 

My list of responsibilities varied during my internship, depending on what the department needed help with. I drafted Instagram posts highlighting women artists/art pieces, wrote tweets for Fresh Talks and calendar events, researched and wrote about exhibitions for the website, edited and sorted old photographs to upload to a digital server, photographed weekly gallery talks and events, researched and read case studies for previous museum’s social media initiatives during closure, and made guides for future interns. 

I am most proud of the connections I made through exhibition openings and talking to curators about their work. I never thought I would experience a job like this, so I made sure to learn as much as I could doing many different things. 

My biggest take-away and clarification of my career goal is that I would rather not work a 9am-5pm job when I’m older. This experience was amazing, but only because I worked with a museum that championed women artists. It’s hard to imagine putting in this type of time for an organization/company that doesn’t have a good ethos. With working Monday to Friday and commuting from Baltimore, the time to make art was extremely condensed. I learned that social media is currently one of the largest factors of business success. The Digital Engagement department is linked to every single other department and social media brings in more people than any other platforms (e.g. advertisements, email, print) for the museum.