Michigan State University’s staff is approximately 12,000 strong and growing. MSU has a great deal of internship and employment opportunities for Spartans like Media and Information senior Michael Nyland, who interned as a graphic designer for the MSU women’s basketball team this summer.
Inspiration Behind the Scenes
Nyland had his first exposure designing social media postings in his internship. The team’s Instagram is dedicated to promoting the players and upcoming season. The page also features fun GIFs and promos, like the holiday post Nyland designed for the Fourth of July.
“The bulk of my work was designing social media postings on different design softwares,” Nyland said. “I designed a GIF on After Effects, and I am so proud of it. The GIF is a countdown till the season kicks off in November and should go live in the next month.”
Nyland also had an opportunity to work with the MSU football team. MSU football is notorious for their promo videos on social media and before the games. He witnessed all the passion behind the scenes with the football team and the football staff.
“The football’s social media team was extremely busy with the season approaching, and I got to intern for them for a couple days,” Nyland said. “It was amazing to help them out, because they are absolutely killing their social media. It gave me plenty of immediate creative inspiration and encouraged me to work harder in my internship going forward.”
Recruiting the Teams
During the summer, the team’s main focus is recruiting for the upcoming year. Nyland gained experience with print media for the first time during the recruitment season.
“I designed various letters and reports on the job,” Nyland said. “I worked on the letters that were sent to potential women’s basketball recruits for the upcoming year. The letters gave the recruits updates on the program or featured invites to upcoming events. I also designed the MSU basketball annual budget report that is given to the university at the end of the recruitment season.”
“Professional Googler”
Internships are a great opportunity to build one’s skill set before graduation. Thanks to his graphic design position, Nyland was able to improve his expertise with design software through the annual budget report, letters to recruits and social media postings.
“I mainly worked in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, but I also worked on After Effects and InDesign,” Nyland said. “I had some previous knowledge of the softwares from classes, but not to the extent I needed for this internship. I was the least familiar with After Effects, and it required a lot of learning on my end. I consider myself a professional googler. I really had to become familiar and know the softwares inside and out.”
The first day on the job, an intern is not going to know everything. And that is okay. It is normal for interns to be unfamiliar with the tasks at hand on the job. Reach out to coworkers and take advantage of online resources.
“I didn’t face any monumental challenges, but I had never designed anything like I designed for this internship,” Nyland said. “I had to learn a new creative process, which was a struggle at first. Researching what others were doing in the NCAA and within our team helped me out.”
By Brooke Segal