Graphic Design Intern with My Bookcase

University - Gray's School of Art

Qualification - BA Hons Communication Design (Graphics)

Job hunting experience - I graduated in 2015 and was lucky enough to start a full time job immediately afterwards. It was, however, not as creative as I would have liked and I spent the best part of the year that I worked there hunting for something more suited to the direction I saw my career taking. Despite having lots of pretty successful interviews, I had the classic struggle of constantly coming second to someone with "more experience". Almost exactly a year after leaving university, I was finally successful with my application for the graphic design internship with My Bookcase.

Role and Responsibilities - Although my internship was predominantly to do with graphic design, it ended up being so much more varied than I could ever have expected! The founder and director of My Bookcase, Cristina, is Spanish and was based in Spain during the time that I worked for her. We came up with a system involving a Skype call at the start of the day, which would establish what we needed to get done, and then we would work remotely via email and Dropbox. I had never worked like this before so it was a bit of a learning curve, but surprisingly effective!

As well as designing content for the My Bookcase website, platform and publications, I helped with the early stages of a new My Bookcase meeting point in the Oxfam book shop on Byres Road in Glasgow, as well as working on establishing a Publication Studio in the CCA in Glasgow, along with Good Press, A Feral Studio and artist Joanna Peace.

Where are you now? - The day before I finished my internship I accepted a permanent graphic design job with a new company based in Glasgow called Ugly Wolf: the kind of job I had been applying for, unsuccessfully, for almost a year. My new job is really exciting; at the moment we're working on rebranding a big hotel collection, which involves a huge spectrum of different projects, from web design to cocktail menus.

I am so grateful to everyone at Adopt an Intern – from helping me feel completely at ease during the application process, to looking after me once I'd settled in at My Bookcase. I don't think it's a coincidence that the job with Ugly Wolf came along when it did; without the internship and Adopt an Intern's help it could have taken me much longer to reach the point I'm at now.