What I Did Last Summer

Editor’s Note: Sue Nguyen, a graduate student in graphic design at RISD, spent the first half of the summer working in our studio as an intern. The following is excerpted from a letter she recently sent, in which she shares her experiences during the second half of the summer in San Francisco, working as an intern for McSweeney’s. — William Drenttel

And now, the gossip…

McSweeneys was great, though extremely (extremely!) relaxed. The people were very kind, mostly male, and extremely odd. Often when engaging in conversation I was at a loss as to how to respond to whatever the person had just said. A polite smile and eye-contact avoidance was my default reply. I worked mainly with Alvaro, The Believer designer/production artist, although I did indeed meet Mr. Eggers (and shook his hand!) though I never worked directly with him.

What was really surprising was how few designers there are in the operations: one (plus one design intern). Given how great their stuff is and how many awards they win, I expected a whole design department. Aside from Dave, most of the design work was done by Alvaro or the McSweeneys general editor, Eli. Eli is really great, although he had a very specific aesthetic (“don’t make it look designed!”), held some rather strong views about designers (“some designers only design for themselves”), and really liked to design things himself. Pretty interesting all around.

The intern situation was also interesting. (Almost all interns were hired via email, without being seen in person by anybody.) They had about ten or fifteen literary interns in the basement, which was hot and smelly and dark, and which also doubled as the stock room for all the books. There were more girls than boys and they were all extremely — suspiciously — attractive.

I worked in the space above the pirate store, so i had to climb a ladder to my “office” each day. The ladder was positioned on the periphery of the classroom space, so discussion was often interrupted when someone would unexpectedly climb down.

In terms of what I made, I got to work on a Believer cover (the “Games Issue”), scan a million photos of a senior citizen working in a mental hospital, add drop shadows to fan letters to Ray Charles, and design workshop certificates for the kids.

All in all I had a great summer.