James Laycock ’16 has dreamed of working for Nike since he was a kid. He doesn’t have to dream anymore. The graphic design major from Williamsburg is currently a summer intern at Nike world headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., outside Portland.
"I tell people this internship is a dream come true, and I really mean that," said Laycock in a recent phone interview. "My first passion was sports—I played baseball and basketball through high school—and my second passion, which developed late in high school, is design. This internship is a perfect blend of the two."
Laycock is a brand marketing creative design intern, working for the North American brand design department. Nike this year received almost 25,000 applications for the 160 intern positions in the company’s paid summer internship program, which started June 1 and ends Aug. 15.
"These interns are from all around the world, both graduate students and undergraduates. This year Nike received the most applications ever," said Laycock.
Laycock is working with a "fairly small" team of about seven designers, which he said is structured like a typical design team: headed by a creative director who manages a group of four art directors. The only intern for North American brand design, Laycock rotates among the art directors. He also is working simultaneously on a "handful of solo projects."
"I have worked on everything from package design to branding for football to brand experience events for tennis and nikewomen," said Laycock. "This has been an amazing, eye-opening experience. It has given me a broader, real-world perspective of design."
Each intern is required to be part of a "cross-functional" project in which they’re placed into teams working with people from other departments. He is one of six interns on his project, which involves "workplace design and the future of workspaces at Nike," which will be presented to a team of executives.
Laycock’s internship supervisor, Alex Lowe, is the design director of the team on which he is working. "James is doing a great job," said Lowe, whose team works on 10 categories, mostly related to sports. "He shows curiosity, which is important in design, and he has provided some really great ideas. We work on a plethora of projects covering a wide variety of areas, so James is getting the full 360 [degree] view of what we do."
Working on a design team is nothing new for Laycock, who first joined Longwood’s Design Lab the second semester of his sophomore year and this fall will spend a fourth semester in the program. He is an art director on his Design Lab team.
"Design Lab and my professors prepared me for this by giving me real-world experience," he said. "I’ve been able to do real design work, and I’ve learned how to work with clients and how to present work. Design Lab gave me something to show Nike that is more than just class work. It has been a great opportunity."
At Nike, Laycock works eight to nine hours a day in an environment he describes as "relaxed but high-energy." His "uniform" is a pair of Nike sneakers, a Nike shirt and khakis or jeans. He shares an apartment three miles from Nike’s "extensive campus" with a fellow intern who is an undergraduate at Boston College.
Laycock is confident the internship will boost his employment prospects after he graduates from Longwood. "It will help immensely," he said. "If I won’t be working for Nike, it will still open a lot of doors for me. Nike hires amazing designers, so the fact I have worked with and been around designers of this caliber will help me a lot when I begin my career. It has given me insight into how designers at this level think about design. Design is at the heart of everything Nike does. To work for Nike, either right after graduating or somewhere down the road, would be an actual dream come true."
Laycock’s adviser, Wade Lough, associate professor of graphic and animation design, praised the young graphic designer. "James is very dedicated to improving himself," said Lough, one of Design Lab’s sponsors. "He asks me to critique his work, asks me after class to explain something further and even asks me what books he should read. Plus, he works well in the team concept of Design Lab. Everything he’s asked to do, he delivers—and more. I’m very proud of him."
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