Intern Graphic Designers
Intern Graphic Designers work with mid-weight, senior and lead designers to help with day-to-day graphic design tasks. These tasks can vary depending on what design field the intern has entered. Working with the Adobe Suite to create print and digital assets is very common. Interns will also be expected to follow briefs set by senior designers and deliver final assets to set deadlines. After a defined period an intern will transition to becoming a Junior Graphic Designer.
Depending on which kind of Graphic Design internship has been undertaken can decide on what kind of work the intern will do on a daily basis. Below are a few of the various styles of Graphic Design internships that are possible.
Interning as a freelancer
As a freelance intern, you will often be given a number of hours each week to work. This can vary from company to company, but you can expect somewhere between 4 hours and 16 hours as a freelancer. These hours are on the low end of what is possible as a Graphic Design freelancer and this is because as it can take the company considerable management time to ensure that there is a consistent workload for their intern. As an intern working for such short times each week you could be tasked with design work that shouldn’t need long deadlines to complete. So for example creating social posts would be a good brief for a freelance intern as you can probably create them in around 4 hours. If you are going for an internship as a freelancer then practice setting yourself short deadlines to create a design. The Design School will be creating example briefs that you can follow to help you practice for your internships.
A start-up internship
As an intern in a start-up, you can expect the unexpected. A start-up is usually all-hands-on-deck with everyone on the team performing multiple roles at once. You could find yourself doing all types of different design work, from social posts, presentation decks for investors, one-pagers, infographics, website, and app design – to name just a few! And depending on the nature of the start-up you may find that your voice is valued because of your age. They will want to glean any insights they can as you may be in their target demographic and essentially you become an easy way to judge if an idea they have is good. So speak up, have balanced opinions, and get ready to do create all sorts of assets for the team. To practice for this kind of role you should make sure you have a firm grasp of Photoshop, Illustrator and a bonus would be After Effects. This would mean you can create digital assets, print assets, and also some motion graphics animations. All are very useful for a start-up.
Part-Time Internship
Becoming a part-time intern can be very useful for both the intern and the design team that’s employing you. It gives experience but also enough time to keep working on university/school projects/life. If the job description for an internship says part-time then it suggests it would be for 2-3 days a week and that the workload they have would be relativity low. Depending on the nature of the business would decide on what kind of design tasks you should expect, but take a look at their website, Instagram, or any other public-facing output they have. What kind of assets are they putting out? Is it all digital, are there animated elements, or print elements? Having a view on the kind of work that they are already producing will help you figure out what programs you need to brush up on before diving into the internship.
Full-Time Internship
A full-time internship is a great way to start your career. It means that the company is committed to taking you on not only as an intern but as a person they can mentor and incorporate into their team. You would be working the full week and have a salary to go with that. On a side note be very cautious about accepting a full-time intern role without money being offered – some companies look to take advantage and it is not worth it. Depending on the company would decide on whether you are working with a senior designer or if you are the only designer in the team but are linked up with the marketing department or similar to create assets for the company. Becoming part of a team of people with a common goal is a great experience. If you find that you are the only designer on the team then learning on the job is going to be a common thing for you to do. Fifteen years ago my first job was creating website designs for Russian Gold mining companies – I had no clue how to do this, but I learned fast and no one ever questioned it! So have confidence in your ability to learn fast and you will be fine.
University Intern Placement
In my current role as Lead Product Designer, I took on an intern designer as a university placement that was meant to be for just one month. We are now 6 months in, increased her hours as much as we can and it has proven to be a very beneficial experience for both parties. Finding new talent within the university can be a great way for companies to find great people to work for. So if you are in University then seek out opportunities to do placements within companies, they can very easily go from intern to full-time junior quickly. Day-to-day design work can vary, but you would be expected to know your way around the Adobe Suite and learn new tools and techniques quickly. One thing that you may come up against is hearing marketing jargon for the first time. Marketing teams have abbreviations for everything and it can take some time to get up to speed with what they all mean. Just remember you can ask questions, find out what something means and make a note of it.
Short Internship of Two Weeks
Short placements can be very useful if you are still testing out the various areas of design. Using these two-week placements to get a feel for the culture of a workplace. What is the work-life balance like? Do they go home on time or are they there until 10 pm each night? Are people friendly with each other or does it feel closed off? What you are like as a person will depend on whether these types of things will affect you positively or negatively, but having a first-hand look inside an office and see what the reality of it as a workspace can be enlightening. Go in with an open mind and with an eye on your own personal values. Ask yourself questions like does this kind of workplace suit me personally, would I enjoy working in a place like this?
Long Internship Placement
Long internships could be anything from two months to a full year. Companies like Google and Apple have amazing internship programs that run for a full year with pretty great competitive salaries that go with it. When I worked at Google there was a sudden influx of perhaps 20-30 interns that were placed in various teams around the Google building. Getting an internship like this means that you get to learn from some of the industry’s best, but more importantly, it gets the Google logo onto your Resume. I can’t understate how many doors this opens. When looking at resumes people often do not read what you did at each place, they just look at the logos, and they are always impressed with the big tech ones. There are so many great smaller companies, with friendly teams who are passionate about the product they are creating. The large tech giants can be a shiny job to aim for but each company has valuable experience to be gained from it. If you find an internship program that sounds good, details interesting experiences that you can learn from and that sits with your own personal values then I would apply for it.
Unpaid Internship
Unpaid internships are common and you should be cautious when looking at these. I see job listings that detail ridiculous things like, ‘Internship with 5 years of agency experience and full knowledge of the Adobe Suite – oh and it’s unpaid.’ What person with five years worth of industry experience is going to work for free at the intern level?
Let’s break down that pretend job posting I just gave you and see what they are actually saying. So when they ask for 5 years worth of experience for an intern level, they are not actually expecting you to have five years of experience. They know no one in their right mind with five years worth of experience would apply for it. What they are asking for is someone that is interested and passionate about Graphic Design. They want someone to be a part of the team and to not get bored with the job. Unpaid internships mean that this company has zero budget but still needs design work created – it’s good to be cautious as we have to ask why does this company have zero budget? What’s going wrong with this company to cause them to run out of money to hire people? And if you accept an unpaid internship, what is the likely hood that it would turn into a paid internship or paid junior position? They don’t have the budget now so they might not in the future either.
Summary
If you are looking at unpaid internships then make sure they are very short term just to get experience on your resume, be strategic about which ones you choose. Ideally, you would find paid internships that are placed in the industry that you are most interested in and can give you the valuable experience you need. You should only be at the intern level for a year max. In this year get your portfolio polished, make sure you have it on a website and as a downloadable PDF. After a few months to a year of being an intern, you should start applying for Junior Graphic Design positions. Apply for jobs, some you won’t hear back from, some interviews will go well or not so well, and others will lead to jobs. This can be a competitive field but the way I see it is that every job on Earth is competitive. If you weren’t doing Graphic Design then you would be competing for something else. So keep working on your skillsets, keep adding to your portfolio, and keep applying for jobs. You can do this, you can get into this industry I have no doubt, but it does require some hard graft of learning all the skillsets and tools and keeping that self-doubt in check.
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