Tagging My Experience

What is it like being an intern at Tag?

I was worth teaching.

Tag was my first real agency experience. Because of that, for the first few weeks I made quite a few mistakes. Eric Crawford, our art director, always made sure to tell me when I made an error and explained why I shouldn’t do what I did, and would take the time to teach me a better solution for the task. The team made me feel like an asset worth developing rather than a burden, which is contrary to some past experiences I’ve had and many of my peers have had, where a little mistake from an intern would mean less work would be given to them.

I felt like my skills were valuable.

Since my first day at Tag I was tasked with creating work that would actually be used for clients. Projects that were relevant to my specific interests and skills were given to me so that I could continue to pursue my favorite things, illustration and layout design. I mentioned once to Eric that I felt that one of my strongest skills was ideation, and because of that I was involved in early brainstorm meetings on projects big and small.

I had the chance to learn new skills.

During my time at Tag, I learned how to create short animations in Adobe After Effects. It was cool to be able to take time to learn something new and put it into practice quickly. Over the duration of my internship I was given multiple animation assignments!

I learned a lot about print production.

I came to Tag almost immediately after graduating from Drexel University. While I learned a lot about design and developing a good work ethic from college, there were a lot of industry-specific things I did not learn until my internship. Every brand Tag works with uses specific Pantone colors, and each project requires a different version of that color depending upon the production environment.

Interactive design is extremely valuable.

Developing designs for larger projects relied heavily on multiple fast iterations. This allows designers to come up with a few design solutions and hand them off to be reevaluated by the next person while working on a few different assignments, versus spending a lot of time on one design that may not even be the best solution to a problem.

While interning for Tag I’ve been able to work on a variety of projects, from ad layouts, website graphics and vector illustrations to logos and short animations. These tasks and responsibilities wouldn’t have been possible at a larger agency or with people who weren’t as invested and passionate about their work.

Interning at Tag is one of the most meaningful work experiences I have had so far in my creative career and I’m so thankful to have had this opportunity.

Zara Leventhal
Drexel University
Class of 2018
Design Arts Major
Interactive Digital Media Minor