Alumni feature – Erin Gabreski
We never know what an #RITPhoto alum is going to do after graduation.
We featured Erin Gabreski as a student September 2014. You can read that post on the following link and read below to see how her life has progressed since graduation in May 2016.
In the two years since that post, Erin has found employment. She is a Graphic Designer at Chocolate Delivery Systems, Inc.
On a daily basis, she updates packaging design and prototype boxes, sprinkle jars and bags. She also photographs things that the kitchen assistant makes for signage, packaging and the website. What she likes most about her job is that she still makes photographs, does design work, and makes prototypes of packaging using her hands. This keeps her active with a diverse set of responsibilities and not sitting at a desk all day working on just one thing. She also likes that the company she works for makes candy and chocolates because as she shared, she is a sucker for sweets!
Erin shared, “visual media prepared me very well for this job. On my interview, I was able to talk about my major and stressed that I knew design and photography and that I was willing and eager to do that for the company as well. I believe company’s love when new employees can wear many hats.
Advice that I would give to visual media students would be to take business classes in marketing and sales because the creative design department will work closely with the marketing and sales people in many cases. It really helps if you can understand why they make certain decisions and what the words mean that they frequently use. I would also highly recommend taking the editorial photography design course because visual media students might have a leg up on the other students who major in just design or just photography. This class was one of only a few classes that really helped directly prepare me for the real working world. Throughout that course, you will work with other students as a team who are from different majors. It’s a great collaboration class and helps you to learn more than you might in classes where the students are from the same major as you. In this class, the one thing you can learn is the how the creative brief is used in the design and photography worlds. The creative brief is used at the company I work.
