My internship at Embrace Relief is coming to an end later this month. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a non-profit organization as a work experience at first. I realized how hard it must be to establish a design team if the workplace runs on interns who come and go after a few months. Yet I knew that any work published with Embrace Relief is meant to help out individuals who need it the most. That was my favorite part of this job, seeing positive responses and outcomes. Before the virus outbreak, the work environment was friendly and quite productive. Everyone was more than happy to help out or provide guidance. I found myself also helping out new interns as well because I understood how stumped one can get.
Although the organization did manage to grant me all the creative freedom there was no solid design guidance where I was given specifications to follow through with. I applied to be a social media intern and it is not what I expected. I did not have to necessarily post anything on their social media accounts, that wasn’t my assigned focus. I was mainly known for creating concepts to encourage donations. Whether it was a short video or trend I made sure to share my thoughts on the matter. My supervisor, Elizabeth made sure to have the whole intern team have weekly zoom sessions to discuss ideas for funding the programs mainly. I made sure to verbally communicate my ideas through rough sketches, comps, and existing references from which I drew my inspiration from. This organization does excel in team collaboration. There are several files and folders shared with me via google docs. All research and collected data would be explained during Zoom sessions. It was how everyone was kept in the loop.
I’m grateful to have had my internship completed at Embrace Relief because of how inviting and collaborative they were with me. It felt great to share and present the tasks I was working on. Feedback was always given in return. However, I am certain I may need another internship experience where a design team is established. A design team obviously works collaboratively but they also communicate in a similar visual language that embeds consistency, functionality, and style into their work. Until then, I will continue with an internship for the next two weeks and later prepare myself for my next future employer.
