Grindstone Internship

Client and Team Collaboration

Introduction

I had a year-long internship with Grindstone, a brand positioning and web development company based in Peoria, IL. During my time with the company I completed various projects, including both individual and collaborative work. Smaller scale tasks consisted of benchmarking, research, and asset transferring.

The main businesses I collaborated with were the Evangelical Covenant Church, Pop-A-Shot, and thirty-thirty Coffee Co.

My work for the Evangelical Covenant Church and Pop-A-Shot revolved mainly around transferring over pages and designing them within certain format parameters. I was responsible for only a portion of pages for the Evangelical Covenant Church. Pop-A-Shot required me to transfer over all of their support articles and design the home page for them (pages linked below).

Development

I used various programs during this internship for development and communication. Web design projects were completed in either Wordpress or Squarespace, design assets were made in Figma, and communication was through Slack.

Results

This internship was an immense opportunity for growth. It lasted the entirety of my junior year, so I had to manage my time effectively between full time classes, another job, and completing as many hours for Grindstone as possible. I loved working with the team, as they were very willing to help and mentor as I problem solved.

My favorite project was the redesign of the thirty-thirty Coffee Co. website. I created the website by myself, and it was my first time using Squarespace. I learned the program as I progressed through the project, and with minor edits from the client and my supervisor, we were able to successfully launch the site.

Benchmarking