LYNDSEY BAKAL
How My Marketing Internship Supports My Goals
For Some Context...
At the time of my internship, I had been working for an Ace Hardware as a keyholder for a couple years. Before becoming a keyholder and during my time as one, I would design a lot of the location's signage and coordinated the store's merchandising efforts. In the summer of 2025, I was offered a position in our marketing department for the entire Costello's Ace Hardware franchise.
This meant I would be doing some of what I had already learned from the Interactive Media courses at the Center of Applied Technology South and my major at the University of Maryland, College Park. But, at the time, I had a lot to learn in the ways of translating visual design into business strategy and how a company's website can improve the user experience.
My Role
Visual Design
I was now applying all design elements I had learned from my education to real marketing events and driving sales. Typically, I was assigned either single pieces or a group of images and videos for a campaign and primarily designed these alone. Please see below for examples of my work.
Maintenence
When I first started with this internship, it was clear that our company's website had a lot of updating that needed to be done. Much of the information about specific stores were either out of date or missing, which was making it incredibly difficult for customers to find what they needed efficiently or at all.
The first few weeks of the internship I did nothing besides update each of our roughly 60 stores, ensuring that each location had up-to-date information on contacting them, store hours, services they provided, and more. This also provided insights with the back-end development of the website.
Collaboration
For the first time, I was also working with a team when applying my design skills. While I worked directly with others in the marketing department, I also worked with other departments, management, and individual stores to ensure that the information I was working with was accurate, consistent, and aligned with both business goals and the needs of our customers.
Examples of my Visual Design
How Does This Relate to my Goals?
Skills I Learned
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Brand Consistency
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User-Centered Thinking
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Cross-Functional Collaboration
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How to Align Creative Work with Business Goals
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Confidence in Decision Making
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Website Design and Maintenance
This internship was incredibly helpful when it came to transforming the skills I had learned into practical, real-world experience that directly impacts users and business outcomes. Before this, I had only worked on projects assigned to me by teachers and professors, and while it taught me the technical aspects of design, this internship taught me how I would actually be applying these skills. It allowed me to see how design decisions are influenced by real constraints, collaboration, and the need to balance both user experience and business goals. This not only made me more prepared for more real-world applications, but excited to learn more about how something I designed or maintained affected real users and their overall experience.