Katherine Franz Handles Graphics & Design as Intern for Small Local Business
from FSU Art BA ’20 Katherine Franz:
PayOut USA is a locally owned, family run business located in Tallahassee, Florida. They are specialist in payroll outsourcing. This means that they provide payroll services for other businesses. These services can range from simple payroll disbursements to benefit payments and quarterly tax reporting. This service allows business owners to concentrate on providing the best service for their customers without having to bother with keeping track of time worked, vacation days earned, payment of benefits, and most importantly keeping up with the constantly fluctuating laws when it comes to taxes and reporting.
As a Studio Art major this is not the typical internship one might consider embarking on. My reasoning for perusing this sort of a company is because I wanted to see how graphics and design are handled and utilized in the modern small business setting. I specifically did not want to be in a creative environment. Due to Covid-19, most of my work this semester has been done remotely, we had a couple of meetings early on in the semester that were held in person to set up the I created a couple PowerPoint presentation templates along with other templates that can be utilized at any point in the future, I have included images of three of the designs below. I am looking forward to being more active as member of the PayOut USA staff post-graduation.
When I began this internship, I was eager to see the difference between designing for an artistic audience and designing for a business environment. What I discovered was rather surprising to me, there is honestly not much of a difference at all. Once you discover and take into account who your target audience will be it is rather easy to develop the design for their aesthetic. The business world is cleaner and crisper, meaning not as free as an artistic piece. Don’t get me wrong, there are times within the business environment where you do want to push the creative boundaries and present the marketing manager with a more artistic choice. When the company is wanting to change their image and update it for a new generation for example. The graphics they may be used to could be from years ago, so in this case I would definitely put forth an option that is both current and out of the company’s perceived comfort zone. They may not know exactly what the direction is that they are looking to move into. I took on this mindset from the start of the internship. In the first meeting I had with the marketing director she stated that PayOut wanted to update and freshen up their image and the appearance of their website, brochures and presentations. She allowed me to experiment and the freedom to present anything I thought would appeal to the current business owner.
This internship offered me a unique opportunity to translate the artistic skills we learn to think and create with into a corporate setting. Thus, allowing me to see what it is like to produce art for a company rather than for artistic statement and pleasure, which was extremely valuable. I believe that anyone who is interested in graphic design/ digital art could benefit from an internship such as mine.