Autumn Hedrick – Graphic Design Internship

I am Autumn Hedrick and I am currently interning at Weber Advertising in Lancaster, PA. It’s been eight weeks since I started my internship and I’ve already learned so much and gained many skills. After I finish my internship, I hope to put my skills to use through a career in digital art, although which category of digital art I’m still undecided. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, and I expect my internship with Weber Advertising to give me some insight into what my options may be.

As the Weber Art Intern this semester, my job duties include basic design projects such as logos, posters, or hand-outs, small touch-ups to projects of other artists, and running deliveries for clients. So far, I have been given the opportunity to present furniture store logos, garage door billboards, and a deli sign for a supermarket chain, to name a few of my favorites. When it comes to reviewing others’ work, I’m typically given guidelines or a map of what needs fixed. A recent example is a mailed pamphlet that needed to be reworded, as well as several columns of a table deleted. While I didn’t make the pamphlet itself, I was tasked with “editing” it to meet the request. Additionally, as an intern, I have the responsibility of delivering completed orders, usually at the end of the day while I’m on my way home. I don’t do this frequently, which came as a surprise since I always imagined it’s what being an intern looked like. However, I’ve truly only made a handful of deliveries, most of which are in or right outside of Lancaster City.

While attending my internship, I learned how to use many Adobe programs, including Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Each program seems slightly different from the others, and I’m still learning the differences, but my skills in all of the programs used have significantly improved since the beginning of the semester. Typically, Illustrator is used for by-hand artwork, such as curves, shapes, and pictures created directly by the artist. Photoshop holds a lot of similar tools but is where a lot of text is edited. It’s also where many of the logos I’ve created have been made. On the other hand, InDesign is similar to how a book is laid out online (we have used it to create books). Each file is created with pages, each with its own layers and components, but they’re all compiled into one document, similar to how Word or Google Docs may lay out a paper. Each of these programs has its own uses, and the project decides which program might be easiest to use.

Growth as, not just an employee, but a person has helped put the real world into perspective for me. My internship here at Weber Advertising has helped me gain real-world experience and a feel for what a graphic designer’s job might look like. I’ve learned how to handle time-billing, projects, and feedback, all of which I would still be ignorant of if not for this opportunity. For a long time, I told myself that graphic design wasn’t something I wanted to do because it was the more “boring” of art fields, but now that I’ve actually seen how it works first-hand, I’ve been able to reconsider it as a future career. Even if I don’t end up going into graphic design, or art at all, I’ll still have this experience to help me along in my future jobs.

As a senior in high school, my future rides heavily on the choices I make in the next year or two. My internship with Weber Advertising has helped guide and inform me of the possibilities my future career could hold. When I go home at the end of the day, I feel like the work I did make an impact, regardless of how small it may have felt in the moment. I hope that many students in the future pursue internships in fields they want to explore because the worst that could come of it is discovering that you almost went into the wrong career. Thankfully, I can say the experience I’ve gained over the past couple of months will forever impact the way I view the world around me.