A design internship is an opportunity for a student in a design program to gain hands-on experience in their field of choice. There are many different kinds of design interns can focus on, such as graphic design, UX design, interior design, and more. The tools that a design intern learns how to use may depend on the kind of internship they have. For example, a graphic design intern may spend a lot of time with Photoshop while a UX design intern needs to know basic coding languages such as HTML.
However, many of a design intern's tasks are similar no matter what kind of design they are focusing on. They shadow professional designers and attend meetings with them to learn about the work. Interns often take on menial tasks like managing social media in addition to their design work.
Most design interns are working towards a bachelor's or master's degree in design or are recent graduates. They do not need many years of professional experience to work as an intern, but a few design projects in their portfolio will make their application stand out. The average salary for a design internship is $46,512 a year, however many internships are unpaid.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a design internship. For example, did you know that they make an average of $18.59 an hour? That's $38,671 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 3% and produce 8,800 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many design interns have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed time-management skills, communication skills and analytical skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a design internship, we found that a lot of resumes listed 21.1% of design interns included graphic design, while 7.8% of resumes included user interface, and 6.3% of resumes included adobe creative suite. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the design internship job title. But what industry to start with? Most design interns actually find jobs in the retail and technology industries.
If you're interested in becoming a design internship, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 73.7% of design interns have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 13.4% of design interns have master's degrees. Even though most design interns have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a design internship. When we researched the most common majors for a design internship, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on design internship resumes include associate degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a design internship. In fact, many design internship jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many design interns also have previous career experience in roles such as sales associate or graphic designer.