Page 8 - My FlipBook

clients face to face, and learned how to build product brands
while meeting deadlines. “In school, you get to design things the
way you are feeling in the moment,” says Ingram, “whereas at an
internship, you may have to design how a 50–60 year-old man

with a fi shing pole on a boat would feel on Father’s Day right
after a cold beer. Through this internship, I learned that the best
Graphic Designers wear many hats (and wear them well), even
though these hats may not always be their own.”
Career websites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor have numerous
listings for summer internship positions in nearly every region of
the country. In some cases interns are hired as full-time employ-
ees upon graduation.

Skills and Personality
Graphic designers are creative people who have an intuitive
sense of art, color, type fonts, logos, photos, and other graphic
elements. They use analytical skills to appraise their work from
a customer’s viewpoint and have a solid sense of the ways their
designs will be received on social media.
Social media is all about storytelling, so graphic designers
need to have great communication skills that allow them to in-
stantly convey the messages their clients wish to express. They
also work very closely with ad copywriters, photographers, pro-
duction personnel, and other design teammates, which requires
them to speak and write clearly and concisely. Since graphic de-
signers often work under tight deadlines, they also need good
time-management skills so they can complete work on multiple
projects at different phases of development, all while managing
their own stress levels.
Graphic design for social media also requires a degree of
humility. You might create a design that ends up being shared
by thousands of people, none of whom have any idea that you
were personally responsible for the work; however, if your em-
ployer receives praise and credit, you know you did your job
well.

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