Alaiza Washington
During the past fall semester, I took my required internship course. In July of 2023, I received the opportunity to work with a consulting firm in Texas on creating a brand identity for a former coach at the university. While working with the owner, I was extremely intrigued by her. She was a black business owner, a female leader leading a whole team, and overall a really nice lady. I did all I could to ensure our experience was pleasant to be able to work up to asking her if her team would be looking for an intern. She was on board with taking me in, and we started working right away.
During my internship, I was the only “designer” working with people who are used to having experienced designers work with them. This was a little scary for me. I found myself being slightly less confident. I couldn’t explain why, though. Maybe it was a slight bit of intimidation from the fact that I was working with a group of working professionals as a college student. As projects came and went, I was pushed to work in software and with skills I wasn’t always using. One project, in particular, brought me the opportunity to really be bold and push myself.
At the time, I received a call from the owner saying that they had received a contract with the state (again, this team is located in Texas). They were tasked with creating an AI (Analysis of Impediments) to fair housing choice. I was specifically tasked with creating the cover, footer, and back page of this document, as well as all notices that were sent out for the data collection. I had created documents before but never official documents. I didn’t know what an AI document was or how deep fair housing even was. This was probably my biggest challenge, and it definitely showed.
Once I received the brief, I immediately did research on fair housing. There was also a team member who knew a lot about the topic, and I found myself talking to her a lot during the process. I decided to incorporate the 7 protected classes of the Fair Housing Act into all my designs. Here is where a new problem arose. How do I represent these classes without creating offensive imagery or stereotypical ideas? To avoid this, I created simple looks of the representation and made sure there was one included that emphasized the specific class. Once that problem was under control, I was next tasked with figuring out what an AI document was. The team provided a lot of background as well as a copy of another city’s AI document.
As the project concluded, I provided the team with all the needed documents. Research and communication were my biggest tools during my process. I had an amazing time working on this project specifically and gained a lot of knowledge from it.
VSU ART + DESIGN 