Grady students excel in graphic design specific internships

This semester three Grady students secured design internships with a variety of companies including See Spark Go, Jackson Spalding, and Hinge Creative. These graphic students, Nico Mejia with See.Spark.Go, Eliza Meng with Hinge Creative and Damalas Moreland with Jackson Spalding have been working throughout the semester, and some have even carried their work to an online format due to recent virtual work requirements.

Within the last couple of years, Grady has restructured its graphics curriculum in order to elevate student’s understanding in the field. The restructure included the addition of a foundations class offered to all ADPR students intended to increase student’s exposure to visual communications. This allowed the previous introductory class and advanced class to enhance its level of learning and overall, expand opportunities for student’s growth.

“These additions really just give us the ability and flexibility to help students nurture those specific skills,” said Kim Landrum, a graphics lecturer. “The fact that Grady had three interns placed as design interns was a really exciting realization for me that this was going to create some opportunities for our students.”

Mejia, a senior intern, has always felt drawn to visual arts. As he entered the public relations major at Grady he knew he wanted to find a way to pursue this interest. He took Grady’s graphic communication classes as soon as he could and studied abroad in Cortona, Italy, to develop his skills. In his position at See.Spark.Go as a graphic design intern, Mejia is responsible for a variety of graphic design request made by clients including t-shirt designs, page layouts, Instagram posts, Google ads, and brand guidelines. He spends a lot of time, brainstorming, exercising his creativity and receiving feedback.

“My favorite part thus far has been the trust that See.Spark.Go (SSG) has had in me even as someone who has not even graduated college yet,” said Mejia. “I like to say that the knowledge I have in graphic design comes from the work I put in outside of the classroom but the knowledge I have in graphic communications is a direct result of Grady’s commitment to have classes that prepare us incredibly well for our field of study. The Graphic Communications classes are a great outlet for creatives within Grady College to apply their passions to the world of ADPR.  It’s because of Grady that I can take a client’s proposal copy and organize it to reflect professional and creative visual hierarchy.”

Since the additional classes were added Grady visual communication professors have noticed a difference in student’s abilities to pick up on an idea and apply it.

“If you say something to them like ‘what’s the importance of developing a concept,’  they know and understand how typography serves a function but they can also express something visually,” Landrum said. “They know all the basic things like balance and hierarchy and movement and layering and how they are important to developing a design and creating an aesthetic. We don’t have to take time describing concepts in the intro class, so we can get to more and dig a little deeper.”