the interviews

It's that time of the year again where everyone is scrambling to get an internship for the summer, or the next semester. What are some questions employers ask during the interview process? I've had some really difficult ones, and some surprising ones too. But I recall going into a phone interview with a list of prepared interview questions (I think she was trying to get rid of me) and having the interviewer not ask me a single one I was prepared for.

so, here's a list of THINGS THEY MAY ASK..
1. What are your skills?
2. Where do you see yourself in a few years?
   a. What do you see yourself doing/ what kind of work?
3. What kind/type of design do you like to do?
4. What is your favourite part of the design process?
5. Do you follow any blogs? If so, which/what?
6. What was your role in your previous job/design internship?
7. Can you speak any other languages?
8. How do you design? (maybe provide a scenario)
9. What do you do on your spare time?
10. Do you have any hobbies, if so what are they?
11. Tell me about yourself (I hate this question)
12. What are your weaknesses?
13. What was the most challenging part of your last semester/ previous projects?
14. How did you find us?

...Anyone else have anything to add?

In general, they just want to know you as a person and see how you react to things as well as what you know about your field and the company you are applying to.

Best of luck!

2012 internship opening - designaffairs

designaffairs has openings for a 6month internship starting Feb/March 2012. But you know what that means... six months later, the spot will open up and you can intern there! They also have several branch studios and is an interdisciplinary firm that covers aspects of design strategy, industrial design, branding, user interface design, and moooore.

The requirement says the internships are for highly motivated and top notch students that are in the 5th semester. I have no idea what 5th semester is, so just apply anyway if you think you meet the former criteria haha.

Industrial design (Feb/Mar 2012) - Munich, Erlangen
User interface (Feb/Mar 2012) - Munich
Usability (Mar/Apr 2012) - Munich

good luck!

http://www.designaffairs.com
under agency >  jobs

2012 internship opening - teams design

Teams design has offices in Essingen, Germany, Shanghai, Chicago, and Hamburg. They do a wide range of products from electronics to housewares, transportation and healthcare.

The openings are for Fall 2012, but I suggest you apply early because they get a lot of applicants. I got feedback from them one time ago, and they really appreciate seeing thought process through sketching, mock ups etc. You could even just do one or two projects showing the design process and that would be enough.

Industrial design - Essingen, Chicago
Interactive design - Essingen
Transportation design intern - Hamburg

good luck!

www.teamsdesign.com

2012 Internship opening - pilotfish

Pilotfish is a fairly large company that mixes industrial design with interaction design and specializes in electronic products. They have branches in Munich, Amsterdam and Taipei, and they work with many international brands. Check them out here.

They currently have openings for Munich and Taipei as an interactive design intern or an industrial design intern. Two positions both available in both locations. (it says so on the website)

I'm not sure when the positions are for, but it's always good to just shoot them an email!
good luck!

http://www.pilotfish.eu/

Internship Opening

Want to try theatre/set design?

Intern as a production technical intern in Chicago at the Looking Glass theatre. (a good place!)
Send your info directly to: handerson@lookingglasstheatre.org or Katie Dysard noted on the site

Summer Internships (June — August): March 1
Fall Internships (September — December): July 15
Winter/Spring Internships (January — May): October 15

http://lookingglasstheatre.org/content/people/internships

ID Invades Milieux

A few ID Student's decided to construct an Installation for this year's Kosmic Event, now entitled Milieux. We thought we'd try to help them fill the huge venue, and show everyone what us ID kids can do. Due to the huge space we decided that a large scale installation was the only way to go. 
This year's theme was Apocalypse/ Resurrection. Following this theme, we drew our inspiration from the recent floods in Pakistan which forced all of the spiders in the area to relocate into nearby trees. As a result of this migration, all of the tree tops became cocooned in spider webs. 
Twenty yards of Fabric, sixty 2x4s, 300 screws, 1400 square feet of synthetic spider webs, the branches of many trees and lots of manhours later five large trees (about 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide) were constructed to fill the space. Thanks to the lighting systems installed each tree was lit from a spotlight above and cycled through a variety of colors. 
We're super happy with how the installation turned out. Special thanks to our awesome team of Jon Cairns, Vince Caston-Rumebe, Jorge Hernan Correa, Ben Miller, Laura Moor and Michelle Zheng and everyone else who helped us along the way! 

The Installation Proposal 

Stretching out the spider webs

Stretching the Webs onto the Branches

NEW View from My Window

1 Dec 2011 - Day one of my new internship.

On my first day, they already had my cutting up foam for some mock-ups of throw cushions to test different sizes. Today, my task is to go to Sham Sui Po, an area with an open air fabric market, to pick out fabric samples for said pillows. I'm really, really, really dying of excitement here!!

There's a picture of the view that looks onto a park (!), as well as some shots of the showroom below the office.

View from my office

21 Nov 2011 - Week 3 of my internship.

I'm just starting my third week here, and I'm beginning to get more projects. There is no looming deadline at the moment for our projects, so we are all taking it very easy. Actually, my coworker just left after lunch and I have the afternoon off now.  It's kind of weird like that.

View from my office

In response to BLMSA's post...

9 Nov 2011 - Week 10 of my internship.

Was supposed to stick around for 9 months, but cut it short to 3 months. I'll be finishing at the end of the month instead to switch to a different internship. Suppose I'll post a picture of my new office in a few weeks!

View from my office

13 Oct 2011 - Week 19 of an awesome internship

I should update more. I'm on week 23 now and it almost feels like it's ending too soon!

Recap: Internship Talk

On September 30th, from 3-5pm, we hosted our first internship talk. We had a couple speakers fresh from their internships talk to us about their experiences with working in the real world. Everything you could possibly know was covered, topics ranged from job-searches, to co-op, to international placements and exciting plans for the future.

CIDSA would like to thank our speakers: Anne, Liz, Kim, Charlotte, Tony, Gabe, and Jason for taking the time to talk to us!

The talks were a great success and we'd love to host another session! If you missed out, I'm sure that our speakers wouldn't mind chatting about their internships.

CIDSA Internship Talk

CIDSA is holding an Internship talk this Friday, Sept 30th at 3pm in the Review Room.


Upper year ID students who have completed internships will be speaking about their experiences in finding and completing their design internships.


Speakers:
Jason Ham
Liz Mok
Charlotte Poon
Kim Thomson
Gabriel Lam
Anthony Keeler
Anne Charbonneau

Young Designer in NYC 3

I just had to buy these brass paperclips and japanese printed linen the moment I saw them...OK, I didn't need them but I just love them. One of the best stores in all of NYC is Kiosk, which located at 95 Spring St. in Soho. For the design minded person, this shop is a must. Really if you come to New York after knowledge of this post and don't go here...you are a fool.

Young Designer in NYC 2

Moma is great, but its all from the past. PS1(public school 1), its little brother gallery located in Queens displays the up and coming. Excellent gallery, beautiful building.

"The minute you think the past was better, your present is secondhand, and yourself becomes vintage." -Karl Lagerfeld

Young Designer in NYC

Hey everyone! Ahh, sorry about starting this off so late! I was pretty busy with this past month, New York Design Week and my firm is working on a ton of new stuff, which is great!... Anyways I'm not really much of a writer so what I plan to do is post some quick tips and suggestions I think the design center brain might enjoy in NYC area!

First things first, eating....now the selection is crazy in New York, but a smart move is to always have cash on hand, alot of the best 'cheaper' places don't take plastic. One being Calexico, which serves gourmet Mexican food. They have 3 locations in Brooklyn and are reopening their mobile cart in Soho, in my firm's neck of the woods!

I got more post soon to come!

50 Things Every Design Student Should Know

Super cool graphic designer Jamie Wieck posted a list of '50 things Every Graphic Design Student Should Know'. Well, just ignore the *graphic* part of the title, because pretty much everything on this list applies to us as well (okay maybe you don't need a printer friend).

I've posted a few of my favorites, or follow the link below to read the full list:

http://www.jamiewieck.com/visual-essays/the-50-things-every-graphic-design-student-should-know/

 

2. There is always someone better.

Regardless of how good you are, there will always be someone better. It’s surprisingly easy to waste time worrying about this. #the50

 

9. Curate your work.

Never stop editing your portfolio. Three strong pieces are better than ten weak ones – nobody looks for quantity, just quality. #the50

 

16. Don’t waste your internship.

A studio’s work can dip, as can its energy. Ignore this and be indispensable, the onus is on you to find something that needs doing. #the50

 

List of CU ID Internships

Hi all,

If you remember, at the portfolio seminar, I mentioned that you could always ask Val or a fourth year for a copy of the list of CU ID internships. Basically its a compiled list of all the internships that students in our Industrial Design program have done.

So if you need just a jump start on finding some companies to take you in over the summer, feel free to skim over it. But download it here first >>> LIST OF CU ID INTERNSHIPS.PDF

Good luck!

Job searching searchers

click the image to jump to the search site

At simplyhired.com, you can search the type of job your are looking for, and set filters such as experience, date posted, education, etc.

seek.com is a job listing site for mainly Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. But you can search by type, keywords, salary, and location.

productdesignforums.com is an online forum with job and internship postings, as well as links and chatter about other resourceful things you might be looking for. There's lots of interesting things to check out but if you are looking for the job postings, it is in the jobs and internship forum under the Education and Career section

Indeed.com has a similar search style to simplyhired.com but I am not sure if this includes Canada or covers the US only. You can search Industrial Designer and filter, by salary, type, location, etc

coroflot.com is a popular website with a widely used job posting forum. You can filter by job categories and also check out other people's industrial design portfolios.

Happy hunting!