My Experience As a World Cafe Live Graphic Design Intern…

My name is Beatrice Smith and I’m an advertising major graduating in May! This past semester, I’ve had the pleasure of interning at World Cafe Live as a graphic designer. This internship has improved my skills with Photoshop and Illustrator immensely and has given me a much better eye for typography. This aspect was extremely beneficial for me, since my portfolio lacked typography completely. My internship provided me with constant feedback and constructive criticism, which is very important in the graphic design field. There is no way you can improve your portfolio without solid and constructive feedback.

Most of my work involves creating online ads that are typography heavy. These paid ads are placed on WXPN.org and Thekey.xpn.com. I was also given the job of creating gig posters for several artists playing at the venue. My art director gave me a lot of freedom with creating these gig posters. These projects reminded me of the importance of understanding a brand identity. You need to understand the genre and image in order to set the correct tone when promoting a specific show/artist to attract the right audience and gain high success metrics.

The music aspect was one of the main reasons why I applied to World Cafe Live. Music is a huge part of my life so being able to incorporate that into graphic design was a major plus. I was able to sit in on marketing meetings, learn about the process of booking and everything in between. It was very eye opening and made me feel more open to all of the different possibilities that are out there. This internship did a great job at making me feel like I was useful rather than doing side work and all of the jobs no one else wanted to do. My ideas were taken seriously and I always had something on which to work. All in all, World Cafe Live was a fantastic place to intern. I gained so much experience in design, which provided me with a lot more confidence to get out there in the working world!