Learning to Work With Clients
This week, a big focus of my internship was learning how to work with “clients” and balance their ideas with my creative ideas. I learned that sometimes you have to put the client’s vision first, even if it is not exactly what you think is best creatively. At the same time, I also learned that part of being a designer is knowing when full creative control from a client could hurt the final product and when it is important to guide them toward a stronger visual outcome.

One of the main projects I worked on this week was designing lacrosse posters for outside the coaches’ offices. These use the Stetson Lacrosse “Culture Words.” I created multiple versions, including my original design, a version based on the coaches’ vision, feedback and ideas from others, and the final approved design. Seeing all of the variations side by side was helpful in understanding how designs evolve through collaboration and feedback. The final product is the compromise; however, I still personally like my original version the best. 

I also worked on a collage style poster, which came with its own set of challenges. I had a limited number of photos and athletes I was allowed to use, and the images came from different photographers over several years. Because each photographer edited their photos differently, it was difficult to create a cohesive look across the entire poster. To fix this, I had to individually adjust nearly every photo’s exposure, contrast, saturation, and overall tone to create a more consistent “filter” and visual style. This process was time-consuming, but it taught me a lot about color correction and how small adjustments can help unify a design.

Overall, Week 2 pushed me to think more critically about collaboration, creative decision making, and consistency in design.