Internship: Armchair Media

By Hadi Seyfi

I ran into an old high school friend recently. She had a lot of good things happen to her recently, the best thing being her job. But she was overly apologetic (embarrassed maybe?) about her job... because she loved it! She was afraid of coming across as boasting or bragging, so it took some encouragement to get a full description of what she did and why she loved it.

I didn't think too much of that encounter until later, when I realized that I had been doing the same thing with questions about my experiences at Armchair. Maybe it's a southern thing, akin to avoiding an overly positive answer to the usual "How's it going?" Last thing you want to do is say how you got a few pieces in the current CA and then find out they just lost their job at LotsaLogos and whatnot.

So. How was Armchair, really? Avoiding too much flowery language... it kicked ass. I was given the opportunity to work on everything from websites to print work for a coveted client, and random stuff in between.

Although I've always had a job since I was 14, I've never had a job that doesn't hand you a list of expected job duties on your first day. Even in architecture, I was handed a hefty folder full of expectations and duties. Not so at Armchair. The first week was spent gauging my experience with various programs (or lack thereof) and how I would be able to best help with production work in each one. Here's the crazy part: they then gave me basic instructions and told me to come back with some ideas in a few hours. Real Design Work! The second week!

I hadn't even been asked to fetch anyone coffee yet (they have their own espresso machine)! After lots of massaging, the designs I comped up ended up as the MA (modern-atlanta.org) folders that they will be using for sponsorship packages and daily office stuff, so it's officially my first printed piece as well. This is particularly important to me for this reason: in architecture, you can easily spend five years learning how everything gets built before getting to design anything more than a bathroom on your own.

In the end, the best part of the experience was getting to see how dedicated, passionate people balance their love of design with the need to pay the bills (Octane and The Local can get pretty expensive). Even the way they looked at billable hours was a refreshing indication of how they respect and foster the creative process.

While Armchair certainly practices a "sink or swim" approach with their interns, it never ever felt that way. It was about pushing the design, not the stress levels of all involved, although we quickly reached a comfort level that allowed everyone to feel free to give me shit about anything remotely related to... well, anything.

That just means they liked me, right?