Payless Internship

Here's some photographs from my time working at Payless in Topeka:

Payless work out of an old distribution center in Topeka, Kansas.

My first job there was to design a gift card for the upcoming Christmas holiday.

They liked my reindeer so much they chose it!

My second job was to design a shoe ad for a Puerto Rican newspaper.

First step, locate the shoes.

After some rough photo shoots I designed 27 possible layouts!

Sorting through the best ones with Justin.

Jimmy does the final shoot.

Justin taking me through the production process.

So far the internship is going well. I'm learning a ton about design in the world of footwear and fashion. The staff at Payless are all very welcoming and friendly. They have been so accommodating and very willing to teach me a lot about what they do. They have a fairly decent sized marketing department which includes pre press, production, graphic design, retouch and even a couple of well kitted out photography studios.

It's a very fast paced environment; ads, product and packaging go through very quickly. They might sit on a rebrand of something for a few weeks or months but when the time is right, whoosh, you gotta get it done in a few hours for a top level meeting.

There are quite a few layers of management which can be interesting to navigate, as far as getting approvals for ads and such, but that would be the norm for any large sized organization. These guys know what works and what doesn't. They've been around for about 60 years and are still doing pretty well despite the economic down turn. As far as efficiency goes, they've got it down to a fine art.