A Reflection as an Intern

Here is a friendly guide of what it’s like being an intern in the Graphic Design industry for Launch Studio! I’ll be sharing my experience from how I got an internship to what I’ve learnt so far, and more!

Tips to get an Internship

• Make sure you have a portfolio ready

• Research the company

  Why do you like the company? Why do you want to do an internship with them? What work of theirs do you like?

• Don’t be afraid of LinkedIn! Message Creative Directors, Managing Directors, Senior Creators

What I’ve learnt so far

• The difference between colour modes on Adobe:

  RGB is for website design whereas CYMK is used for printing such as books, editorial, flyers, business cards etc. CYMK refers to the four ink plates used to describe the printing process itself.

• The difference between hex codes and pantone colours:

  A pantone colour is primarily used in print or fashion designs whereas hex codes are used when creating banner ads, social media content, websites etc.

• You can have multiple artboards in one file on Illustrator! (Shift, O) to rearrange your artboards.

• How to help text stand out by using overlays/drop shadows.

• It is important to link and embed images properly in Illustrator otherwise your file may lag.

• You can ‘inspect’ any web page and pull images/assets from it by right clicking on the page and clicking inspect, applications. This is useful for e.g., pulling a client’s logo from their website to create social content for them.

• When creating an Instagram carousel, you can easily intertwine the pages by creating the artboards in illustrator with 0-pixel gap between each artboard and cross over images/assets.

• Keynote is fab for short, snappy animations and can be created in minutes.

• ‘Content aware fill’ on photoshop is highly useful for replicating parts of an image and removing objects from an image

Useful Shortcuts for Adobe Illustrator

• (M) rectangle shape

• (L) circle

• (P) pen

• (Shift, Cmd, [) send to back

• (Shift, Cmd, ]) bring to front

• (Shift, O) for artboards up

• (Cmd, 7) to create clipping mask

• (i) eyedropper

• (V) selection tool

• (A) direct selection tool

• (B, followed by option) smooth tool

• (Shift, Cmd, V) to paste in exact place

• (hold shift) when moving an object to keep it in the same column/row

• (Cmd, -) zoom out

• (Cmd, +) zoom in

• (i) (for eyedropper) on text boxes too to copy font properties

• (Cmd, 2) lock layers

• (Option, Cmd, 2) unlock layers

Useful Websites

• Flat Icon (useful for downloading icons in SVG format)

• Freepik (handy for vectors, mock-ups and more)

• Pexels (free stock photos, like Unsplash)

• Pixabay (free stock photos)

• Font squirrel (good for identifying fonts)

• Behance (good design inspiration)

Useful Plug Ins

• Go Full Page (Screenshot full website)

• Fonts Ninja (Identify any font, including properties, from any website)

My Role as an Intern

• Hands on with client work such as creating social content, banners ads, brand evolvement, iconography, illustrations, research and pitch deck for a production company.

• Creating content for Launch itself! Such as blogs, social content (posts and reels for Instagram)

• DJ – at Launch we all take part in providing the studio with a lively music playlist throughout the day. (Disney Mashup hour is a team fave).