In the last of our series of blogs, Cameron Gill gives us an insight into his experiences during his summer internship at DWH and what the future holds.

I’ve been working at DWH now for five weeks as an intern and I’ve had the best time so far working within an agency.

 Before meeting David, I had previously done work experience at two other places and absolutely hated the work. I felt like I’d undertaken a four-year graphic design course only to end up making Excel spreadsheets and finding images for blogs. Just a month after leaving college, my days were dragging, and I came home every day feeling fed up.

 There was no way I could spend the next 50-plus years of my working life like that, so I started looking at other career options within the industry.

 I sent off my portfolio to the last few agencies within my area or that I had missed previously and, as luck would have it, that’s when I discovered DWH.

Learning on the job

 Within a week of applying, I had an interview. David went through my portfolio, pinpointing certain things that he really liked. Before I knew it, he offered me a 5-week internship. I started the following Monday.

 I met Aydan, the other designer, and within an hour I had my head down working on some pretty exciting projects.

 The workload was a lot fuller on, but the projects were much more like what I pictured doing when I was at college, such as designing logos. I immediately felt comfortable, as both Aydan and David were extremely nice. If I struggled or needed help, one of them would be straight over.

 In five weeks of working for DWH, I’ve learned so many new tricks and keyboard shortcuts within the Adobe programs, as well as the importance of guides and attention to detail when designing.

 David has also been confident enough in my abilities to assign me two solo projects, just for me to work on. One of the projects is creating a marketing logo for a friend of his, and the other is a website redesign for a charity, which is very exciting, as I’ve never done any type of website design or anything like that before.

 One thing I’ve always said whilst being a designer is that I love to learn, whether that is something as simple as a keyboard shortcut, or something as complex as going through the process of designing and piecing together a fully functional website.

The highs and lows of design

However, it hasn’t always been continuous highlights. Just like any other job, you get those down days, and I had a couple of pretty bad days midway through the internship.

At that point in time, if you were to ask me the top things that I enjoyed the most and my favourite program within design, I’d probably have said something like illustration or corporate identity and Photoshop or Illustrator. If you asked what I enjoyed the least, I would have said designing any type of brochure and working with InDesign.

Well. At the beginning of the third week, I was asked to redesign a small brochure for an office shed company using only InDesign. Lucky me!

As you might have guessed, I did an awful job of the design. This wasn’t from a lack of enthusiasm and was purely down to my lack of knowledge and skills in InDesign. I was embarrassed, to say the least!

I had a chat with David, and he reassured me and gave me the chance to have another go. With a bit of perseverance and help, I did a really good job—so much so that you wouldn’t guess that I designed them both a few days apart.

Now I love using InDesign just as much as the other programs, and I can’t wait for more projects to come through so I can just keep learning.

From DWH to … DWH!

I’m very grateful that David gave me the opportunity to shine and further develop my design skills. Even when I messed up, he still persevered with me, helping to make me into a better designer. Without that support, I don’t know where I would be today.

I had a great time during my five-week internship and learned so much from the experience. To top it off, David offered me a full-time employment probation at DWH, which I’m very excited about! I can’t wait for what lies ahead of me in the future.