Sabrina Majeed - A1

After graduation, I would like to work in a full-service design firm. The size could vary for me, I think I would be comfortable in either a large company or a small one, though not too small (like four people), because I would feel lonely at work if not surrounded by a variety of different people. That is another reason I would like to work in a full-service firm. I want to be exposed to colleagues with roles different from mine and learn from them; such as web-developers and interaction designers. I've had a taste of inter-disciplinary work through Carnegie Mellon and I definitely enjoy approaching a problem without a weak link and having an expert for all 'fields' or facets of a project present.

Characteristics that I would want to avoid are places where different disciplines never see or communicate with one another. I know of many companies whose business model consists of designers just handing off their finished comps to programmers who then program it (or change it w/o the designer knowing), and designers who are also just given written instructions from project managers. I don't want to work in a place that just "hands off" work in a system, I want to work in a place where people collaborate together and everyone shapes the final product together. Also, I don't want to work at a place post-graduation where junior designers are basically photoshop monkeys and their ideas and feedback are not taken into consideration. Basically, a place where as a designer all you are doing is implementing the design of art directors.

Like many others have stated, location is very important to me. The specifics of what is important is hard to nail down... there's the superfluous stuff like weather and public transportation, but then also just the type of people that a certain city attracts. I feel like I probably want to stay away from the south and mid-west, because I grew up there and I don't see myself making the daily commute from suburb to city but rather living in already flourishing urban environment. Also, I would not mind working in a corporate setting. I interned at a large internet company before and it was the opposite of the stuffy work environment most people imagine. Not to mention, I really like the idea of designing for the public and companies like that actually facilitate helping your work reach millions of people... as opposed to a small firm that "designs" for "designers".