feature / alumni / internships / product-design / graphic-design / entertainment-design
March 25, 2025
By Solvej Schou

Navigating creative career paths with purpose and passion  

ArtCenter provides students with industry knowledge, work-ready skillsets and the resilience to work in and navigate an evolving creative economy  

Nervous, anxious, restless. All these words describe how college students often feel as they prepare to graduate and enter the workforce. But ArtCenter graduates leave the College well-prepared for what the real world has in store.  

This is due in multiple ways to the efforts of ArtCenter’s office of Creative Careers and Global Programs, which provides students with industry knowledge and work-ready skillsets that help them forge successful creative career paths, and the resilience to navigate a quickly evolving creative economy. Internships, mentorships, industry-sponsored courses, study away, career advising, entrepreneurial workshops, and networking with employers are just a few of its offerings.  

“Our team provides resources to support students at every stage of their journey as emerging creatives—all made possible by ArtCenter’s network of alumni and industry partners,” says Creative Careers and Global Programs Associate Provost Amanda Webb. “ArtCenter’s fast-paced learning environment, led by industry professionals, is complemented by our team’s career readiness support. Each term, students refine their career readiness, equipping them to secure unique work opportunities.”  

These opportunities lead to successful careers. ArtCenter alumni go on to create works that impact every part of our lives—films and television shows, photography, theme park attractions, sneakers, vehicles, video games, children’s books, art in galleries and museums, and so much more.

From Interning to Working at Dell: Dewey Yu

For alum Dewey Yu (BS 21 Product Design), an industrial designer at Dell Technologies in Austin, Texas, taking advantage of multiple Creative Careers and Global Programs offerings—from mentorships to internships and Sponsored Programs—helped him land a full-time job at Dell that he began immediately after graduating.  

Yu, who grew up in San Jose, transferred to ArtCenter from Purdue University, where he had been pursuing a business management degree. “I focused early, at ArtCenter, on what I wanted to do: consumer electronics,” says Yu.  

As a Product Design student, he participated in ArtCenter’s Mentorship Program, in which students have the chance to be mentored by alumni and industry partners. Students apply during the Spring and Summer terms to be paired with a mentor for 10 weeks in the Fall term.   

Yu’s mentor, alum Della Tosin (BS 15 Product Design)—who has worked at Nestlé Health Science, Amazon and PepsiCo—gave him constant feedback on projects, for his portfolio, and helped him update his resume. 


“As a student, in that time of your life, you don’t really have a lot of connections, and you’re not sure what people in the industry are looking for,” says Yu. “Some people might think it's flashy rendering. Others think it's more about process. Having one-on-one feedback from a mentor in the industry and getting that perspective is very helpful.”  

With his updated resume, and while toggling rigorous Product Design courses, Yu applied to internships through ArtCenter’s job board. He first landed a product design internship at the consumer product company Munchkin, where he worked on projects that included a silicon washable flip cup now available at Target. Later, he secured a remote industrial design internship at Dell.  

Yu also gained valuable experience in the Sponsored Studio course The Future of Creative Workflow, with the Taiwanese computer company Asus, in which students used online tools like Miro and Figma.  

Sponsored Programs—in-class ArtCenter experiences based on partnerships with brands—include Sponsored Studios and DesignStorms. Sponsored Studios are 14-week interdisciplinary courses where students from different departments work on real-world briefs from sponsor companies. DesignStorms are extracurricular three-day workshops in which students work closely with designers from sponsor companies.  

“That was my first time working on a multidisciplinary team,” says Yu. “A user experience student on my team introduced me to types of prototyping I brought later to my Dell internship.”  

As an intern at Dell, Yu worked on XPS and Alienware gaming devices and was offered a full-time job before he graduated. “The skills that I learned at ArtCenter—work ethic, hard skills, soft skills—translated to interning and working at Dell,” says Yu.  

Yu returned to ArtCenter as a recent alum to provide feedback to students in a Sponsored Studio with Dell on the future of gaming. His manager at Dell, alum Nicholas DiLoreto (BS 06 Transportation Design), Dell’s industrial design director, has become a mentor. DiLoreto’s manager is alum Justin Lyles (BS 00 Product Design), Dell’s senior vice president of experience design.  

“There’s this bonding you get, as alumni, even though we're generations apart,” says Yu. “To me, that’s the most valuable part of ArtCenter: having access to passionate professors, people and alumni in the industry. They’re in tune with what’s going on in the design world right now.”

From ArtCenter Berlin to Sony: Susie Koh

Whether students know the career direction they want to take or they’re still unsure of their path, Career Advising helps them feel confident in their ability to thrive within a creative environment, from working as in-house designers and artists to freelance work, entrepreneurship and applying for fellowships and grants, says Career Advisor Eilís Russell. Career Advisors help students to search for jobs and internships, design professional materials, prepare for interviews, build a personal brand as an artist, and more.

“It’s not just about being able to write a resume,” says Russell. “It’s about developing the confidence and preparedness to face the challenges and opportunities in today’s creative landscape.”

Alum Susie Koh (BFA 21 Graphic Design), a designer at Culver City-based Sony Pictures Entertainment, designs digital, promotional and on-air assets for Sony’s game shows division, including for the shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Koh first interned at Sony as a student, before landing a job there when she graduated. She also interned earlier as a graphic design intern at the Seoul-based marketing agency InterGram, whose CEO is ArtCenter alum Daniel Ahn (BFA 06 Illustration).

She broadened her perspective and interdisciplinary design skills at ArtCenter Berlin, the College’s year-round satellite studio and study away program in the German capital. The studio, which was established in 2013, hosts transdisciplinary studio projects, giving ArtCenter students an immersive cultural experience in a city known for reinvention.

ArtCenter’s Global Programs include faculty-led study away programs designed specifically for ArtCenter students and led by ArtCenter faculty, exchange programs with several of the world’s most respected art and design schools (e.g. Tama Art University in Tokyo), and individualized study away programs through other colleges and providers.

“I feel like I must be the biggest beneficiary of ArtCenter’s system,” says Koh, who was born and raised in South Korea, grew up loving art and design, and moved to the United States to attend the College. “Berlin was a turning point in my ArtCenter life.”

Koh was one of 14 students from three different majors—Graphic Design, Product Design and Interaction Design—who worked on The Bauhaus at 100, a project focused on homes for future nomads that took inspiration from the 100th anniversary of the German art school and movement. “It was a huge collaborative opportunity,” says Koh. “And as a graphic designer, it was amazing being in a city full of great typography.”

Inspired by Berlin and supported by then Berlin faculty member and now Graphic Design Chair Ming Tai, Koh pursued an internship at Sony, assisting in video production, post-production and promotional design for Sony Pictures Television’s marketing division.

After graduating, Koh was invited back to ArtCenter to participate, as a graphic designer, in a Sponsored Studio with Jacuzzi. Her internship at Sony morphed into a Sony graphic designer job and eventually led to her position as a designer in the game shows division.

Her job at Sony includes creating visuals for social media posts for Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, creating branding, packaging and new logos for specific Jeopardy! tournaments, and collaborating with networks like ABC and CBS, as well as streaming services Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.

It wasn’t the world of motion design that Koh had imagined for herself when she began studying at ArtCenter, but she felt excited and prepared.

“When I started as an intern, I felt like, ‘I can do this,’” she says. “I can do motion design. I can do typography. I can do everything, every kind of project, because I’m from ArtCenter.”

From Game Design Intern to Area Designer: Simon Smith

For Simon Smith (BS 23 Entertainment Design), an area designer at Irvine-based Xbox game studio Obsidian Entertainment, interning as an ArtCenter student at Coin Crew Games, Weird Woods and the immersive game show 100 League helped him boost his game design professional skills to intern at Obsidian when he graduated, and then get a job there.  

Smith works on Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds 2. As an area designer, he designs the areas—using tools like Unreal Engine and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator—that games take place in.  

“It’s just a lot of fun,” says Smith. “You get to work with systems, with people who create characters, and with professional environment artists. You’re dictating the flow of things a little bit, and you work with everybody, which I really like. Level design and area design tend to be easier break-in points for students to get into the industry.”  

Smith, who grew up in Southern California, earned his first bachelor’s degree from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, in philosophy, before getting his ArtCenter bachelor’s degree in Entertainment Design, with a concentration in Game Design. Between degrees, he waited tables and figured out his path. He knew about ArtCenter from his alum dad Chris Smith (BFA 03 Graphic Design), and he was into video games, so Entertainment Design was a great fit.  

“Obsidian is one of my favorite single-player game studios and one of the companies that inspired me to pursue games and go to ArtCenter,” Smith says. “When I was waiting tables, I called Obsidian and asked how to become an intern. Someone said, ‘We usually take interns who are college students or recent graduates.’ I knew then that I needed to go back to college.”  

As an ArtCenter student, Smith honed his technical skills and learned programming, and was a mentor at the College’s Game Jam, in which high school and college-aged students assemble a team and take an idea from concept to playable game in 48 hours.  

In the course Game Design for Themed Entertainment, Smith served as lead programmer for Kitchen Kauldron, an immersive game in which players join a witch’s kitchen crew to save her failing food truck. The game won the 2023 alt.ctrl.GDC Audience Award at the Game Developers Conference.  

The following year, as an alum and adjunct instructor, he advised that same course’s next team of students which created Chú Mó, an immersive game exploring themes of East Asian exorcism. That game went on to win the 2023 Live Action IndieCade Award and the 2024 alt.ctrl.GDC Audience Award.  

He credits internships and making connections through faculty and alumni as pathways to career success.  

“Internships are really important,” says Smith. “Students should seek them out. When I came back to school, I was very focused and knew what I wanted to do. I took direction as well as I possibly could. And I was banking on the quality of work that I'd come to expect of ArtCenter.”