Having Fun becoming a Design Professional
Hi, guys! my name is Sydney Gronka and I’m a UX design intern at Vigorousity.LLC. What we’re doing at Vigorousity.LLC is building a social media app. We’re in the process of developing and plan on reaching out to investors in March when we have a full functional prototype. Once this happens and we raise money, our app will hit the App Store.
What I do within the company is create custom icons and graphics. I used Illustrator to create a set of animal badges from which users can choose for their avatars. I’ve included a few in this post, but I’ve made over 50 thus far.
I’ve also used a combination of Illustrator and Procreate (a drawing app for the ipad) to create a graphic to be used on the landing page of the site. I’m really pleased with how it turned out!
After my internship, I know that I would like to continue to work on a design team. I really enjoy making illustrations and enhancing a brand’s look. I’ve had an overall positive experience at my job. We have excellent design management and I was taught how ideas flow and generate within the company. The boss gives an idea of his vision, we brainstorm, sketch, and use Adobe XD to bring the user experience to life. Learning Adobe XD has strengthened my personal portfolio greatly. If you don’t know what XD is, it’s a prototyping design software. It allows you to generate professional and totally clickable website mockups. If you’re an advertising major/art direction, you gotta learn it!
I’d say my experience at Vigorousity.LLC is a lot less formal than I anticipated. This is because it’s a start-up company in its early phase of development. We have less than 20 employees. As the company grows, I’m sure the environment will change as we hire more people and develop an HR unit. However, the design team that I work with values being professional and operates efficiently. Being that the company is smaller, my designs make a direct impact on our project, which is so satisfying. I see on a regular basis how I have made a real difference within the company. I am able to receive immediate feedback and direction for my contributions. It’s made me really happy to be a part of the team.
Keep a look out for Gikkle in the app store within the next year! Be sure to download it and tell me what you think at anytime! You can reach me at sydneygronka@gmail.com or on Twitter/instagram @eye_inked.
