Taking the First Step

Hi! My name is Feygunli Feng. I am a senior Advertising major with a concentration in Art Direction. This was my first internship, and I was a graphic design intern for Nine Dots Media with Geoffrey Klein. I’m very grateful for having Nine Dots as my first internship as networking and reaching out to people was very nerve-wracking for me.

I dreaded and feared networking as I was not comfortable talking to new people or asking for favors. Fortunately, I had Geoffrey Klein as a professor, and he was opening opportunities to his class for internship work. Normally, I’d be very hesitant to reach out, but Geoffrey was someone with a lot of character! He loves to talk, and make corny dad jokes but more importantly, he made everyone feel welcomed. I found him to be very approachable and easy to talk to so I took the opportunity to ask him for an internship. After my interview, we talked more about networking, and he was very open and honest about the expectations of this internship which I appreciated. He would not be able to help navigate any Adobe program if I was stuck, meaning I would have to figure it out on my own or through YouTube. Which helped me to troubleshoot on my own a lot.

My overall experience at Nine Dots was pleasant as it was a relaxing environment and I learned a lot about how this small agency runs, but I don’t think this agency is for me. I would prefer to work on projects that give more room for creativity as a lot of the client work had a minimalistic style, such as RDCL and KMJ which prevented me from doing more elaborate work.

I’m thankful that Nine Dots Media was my first experience in the advertising world as this was a welcoming and relaxed environment. It allowed me to take my first step to network and do real client work.