Summer Internship Spotlight – Michelle Saipe at Pentagram

Where in the world are you? What are you doing? 

As a Colorado native, I figured that this summer was the ideal time to try something new. I decided to pursue an internship in NYC which landed me at Pentagram, the world’s largest independently-owned design studio. Working under the legendary Michael Bierut, who has designed for companies such as The New York Times, MasterCard, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the Hillary Clinton Campaign, I have been exposed to more design elements and branding strategy than I could have imagined. 

I worked as a Project Coordinator and Strategy Intern for Verizon, our team’s largest client. Working to coordinate and manage a multi-million-dollar project has given me a glimpse inside marketing at a huge corporation, as well as our firm. As the MBA intern on our team, I was afforded a lot of freedom to establish my roles on various projects. I worked closely with the Project Manager to find pain points of working with a large corporation and implemented processes to solve them. Working with the Verizon team at Pentagram had several advantages: 1) I was able to sit in on every Verizon meeting and see behind the scenes into the company’s branding strategy, 2) I was able to go to Verizon headquarters and meet with their marketing leaders and 3) the best part, was that I could see my work have real applications to both Pentagram and Verizon!

Are there any fun perks? 
Working at Pentagram has been chock-full of fun perks, including the bi-monthly design speaker series. I’ve had the opportunity to hear from lead designers and strategists behind brands such as Chobani, the NBA, and USA Today. Additionally, Pentagram brought typographers from around the world to come talk to us about the new typefaces (AKA “fonts”) that they are drawing. 

One of my absolute favorite parts about going to work every day was our incredible in-house chef Anne, who cooked the most amazing lunches. She even themed them each meal during the whole World Cup!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you applying anything that you learned during your 1st year to your work this summer? 

Although I came into a design firm knowing NOTHING about design, I found that classes from my first year at Leeds, such as Pete McGraw’s Marketing class and Nathalie Moyen’s Applied Finance class, enabled me to feel comfortable talking about branding strategy with my team, and confidently put together a financial analysis in Excel. My first year at Leeds gave me a good foundation in marketing and strategy, and my internship showed me how they apply in a real-world scenario.