I Wouldn’t be Happy Doing Something that Wasn’t Creative

Being creative and artistic has always appealed to senior Graphic Design major Tara Kaplan. 

“I’ve always been naturally drawn to graphic design, I’m a very artsy person, and I’ve always been surrounded by artsy people.  I was kind of the art freak growing up.”

With two recent internships and graduation just a few months away, Tara is set to make a career out of her creative passion. 

Tara secured her first internship in the summer of 2014 with Uncommon LLC, a company that makes custom iPhone cases for businesses and clients.  Tara worked as a design intern, creating a wide variety of phone cases for retailers and other clients. 

“I have found that creating work for retailers is super satisfying and seeing a tangible object people can purchase in stores such as Apple reinforced my love for design.”

After a summer of graphic design, Tara worked on a design portfolio with Professor Carrie Firman, which helped in finding another real world experience.  In November 2014, she was hired as a graphic design intern with Ideas that Evoke, a Madison based social media marketing company. (that's Tara on the far right, standing, in the photo above.)  For over a year, Tara was tasked with creating images and content for various clients. She produced templates and ad campaigns to appear on the social media channels of a number of different clients.  Now, with graduation in May fast approaching, Tara is looking to expand her creative horizons. 

“There are so many different things you can do with graphic design and I feel like I’ve done so little in the realm of things….I wouldn’t be happy doing something that wasn’t creative.”

As her Edgewood College undergraduate experience comes to a close, she credits the small community feel as one of the keys to her success.

“I always went to big schools, I graduated high school with 900 people…If I went to a bigger school I wouldn’t get the attention and critiques that I needed so that was huge for me.”

Additionally, she considers her one on one relationships with professors to be a huge asset.

“Definitely Carrie helped, professors make themselves available for students here, and I would email Carrie about something not even related to school and she would help me out. So it wasn’t just in school stuff, it’s out of school stuff, real world stuff.”  

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