Design Students in Search of Internships Strive to Perfect Their Portfolios

If you're a student studying design (industrial design, product design, mechanical design, etc.) you're probably working all hours of the day and night already. If you're applying for an internship this summer, expect things to get even harder.

The internship process is much more involved for design students than for other students. The reason? It's impossible for a design student to communicate his or her level of skill with a simple resume and cover letter. The skill sets of design students are broad, diverse, and somewhat difficult to explain in writing. That's why these students need to catalogue their work using portfolios.

Professional designers use design portfolios to showcase their work as well, but the importance of the portfolio is magnified for students vying for that all-important first internship.

A design portfolio is a collection of pages displaying projects that a student has worked on to date. The contents of these pages can range from sketches, to marker renderings, to computer-generated models, to scanned images of actual working prototypes of products. Students don't only have to worry about how good their projects are; because design studios look at all aspects of the portfolio, the portfolio itself must be "designed" to perfection.

Once draft portfolios are in place, students upload them to websites such as Coroflot, which is a portal for connecting designers and design jobs. It also contains forums where students can get critiques and advice from other students, professors, and professionals. Another website, Product Design Forums, deals specifically with portfolio and project critiques. Many students also have their own design-specific websites and blogs.

Internships benefit design studios and students alike. Studios get to work with fresh, engaged talent, and students get hands-on experience with the craft of design. However, some designers say that the teaching of design isn't keeping up with advances in the professional world. Design studios are increasingly looking for interns highly skilled in traditional design techniques such as sketching and rendering, along with more modern methods such as computer-aided design (CAD). Learning these skills, in general, takes many years. Students who haven't had much practice before entering college can find themselves overwhelmed trying to learn everything in a brief four years.

If you are a high school student (or a parent of a high school student) interested in getting into design, you need to get started as soon as possible. Hone your design skills now, and find out which schools have the best current design programs. There are many rigorous schools located outside of the US, so if the student is dedicated and passionate (and resources allow), it is worth adding these options to your search.