Blog @ Percolate

This is a guest post from Blandine Mathieu, our summer design intern. If you’re interested in interning at Percolate you can get in touch here. Over to Blandine:

This was it. The end of the school year was coming. I was planning to leave Arizona for the summer to do an internship in the field that I love, design. When deciding on where to go I thought what better place to get some hands-on experience than at a startup company?

I was soon packing my bags to move to one of the greatest cities in the world, NYC. With the foundation that my school had given me in design and illustration I thought I was 100% prepared for my  internship at Percolate.

Boy was I in for a wake up call.

Everyone was extremely welcoming on my first day at Percolate. I met with my design team (Dom and Erin) and they quickly got me started on my first project, which was to redesign the Percolate documents. A great first project to get myself familiarized with a couple of the Percolate style basics; typography and color.

From here I started to apply my handle of the Percolate brand to a range of company communications; from business presentations and t-shirt designs to email templates and client onboarding documents. Since the majority of my previous experience was print based I didn’t expect to do web design work so soon, but with the help of my fellow designers, I drove right in. Asking a million questions a day, I started to get a pretty good understanding of this new design method. And thank goodness, because little did I know I was going to be doing more of it.

July soon came round and things started to get real busy for us as we were releasing the new version of Percolate. On the design side of things for me, this involved a lot of brainstorming for illustrations to represent the new product features. We shared ideas back and forth and drew up thumbnails. When we decided on a set, it was time to get to the production. Dom, Erin and I divided and conquered.

I was also applying my newly obtained web design skills on the new Queue feature. There was some long days for us and my computer decided to crash a few times in the process…(Of course) but we got all of the designs done in time for our deadline and it ended up looking awesome.

The most amazing aspect about this internship is the fact that I never actually felt like an intern. Forget the coffee runs, printing paperwork and all of the busy work. My team gave me full responsibility to tackle project after project. Anything from designing the Percolate notebooks to the new calibration books for clients. With the team’s guidance and recommendations I was able to complete all of my projects.

The saying “You’ll learn everything on the job” really came to fruition throughout my experience. Yes, my education has given me the basic tools to get started, but working with professional designers is an enriching experience that you just cannot obtain in a classroom atmosphere. Not only did I pick up new skills during this internship but it also exposed me to different fields of design that has now become an interest of mine.

On my last day the design team set up a little presentation about my journey at Percolate; showing everyone the projects that I had worked on during my two month stay and the progress I had made. I left that day with a few design gifts and a card signed by all the Percolators. The amount of detail and planning for my last day was absolutely impressive and definitely unforgettable.

Amazing internship.