SARAH KLASSEN



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IT TAKES A VILLAGE
2023
Timeline / 10 Weeks
Tools / InDesignTeam / Natalie O’Rourke
After conducting research on student internship experiences, we learned that design students at the University of Washington often don’t know what resources they have available to them or don’t know how to ask their supporters for help. So, we created It Takes A Village: A quarterly publication that provides resources, tips, and tricks, to help students feel truly supported during design school. Plus, a website companion that ensures every cohort receives up-to-date info, by letting students input their personal experiences.













To be continued

It Takes A Village is designed to be a quarterly publication. Other topics in the series would include application to the program, graduation, and building a portfolio. Read the full first issue here.



Stay in touch

The mobile companion ensures every cohort receives up-to-date info, by allowing students to input their personal experiences. In a short survey, participants see the statistics update in real time as they compare their story to others'.







How might we design infographics that help UW design students understand the internship process?

Before creating our broadsheet, we conducted research as a class on student internship experiences by analyzing job listings from online databases like LinkedIn and Indeed. With a strong foundation of quantitative data, Natalie and I chose to conduct additional interviews and put out an anonymous survey to gather more stories from the student body. We noticed that students' experiences were extremely varied, making it difficult to summarize the internship application process to classmates, friends, and family. 

In our initial designs, we proposed a publication targeted specifically at parents and caretakers; However, we realized that the primary audience for this internship info is students so while our first issue speaks primarily to students, it also has information that parents and peers would find helpful. Our final solution has a strong brand system that can adapt to the ever-changing database of UW Design information, to best help future generations of designers.