Malta Internship

Context

Malta was my first real contact with the professional world. Until then, my work was judged by teachers who were there to help me learn. Here, the clients were not there for my know-how. They had a business to run, a deadline, and a clear idea of what they wanted. My job was to satisfy them.

During the internship I worked on four or five projects. I am showing two of them, with client names and branding blurred.

Project 1: a car dealership website

I designed a full proposal for a car dealership: homepage, listing pages, and the mobile version. In the end, my version was not the one retained. My supervisor reworked it before it went to the client.

I still show it because that is where I learned the most. Seeing what changed between my proposal and the final version taught me how a client brief is read in an agency: less personal expression, more clarity, more conversion.

Project 2: maintaining a group's WordPress site

For a local group, I handled CMS updates on their WordPress site: new content, page edits, visual consistency across sections. Less glamorous, but very concrete: working inside an existing system without breaking it.

What I learned

• Real clients are not teachers. Feedback is about their business, not about my progress.

• A new methodology. Agency workflow, short iterations, validation by a supervisor before the client.

• New tools. First time using Affinity Designer for client work.

• My own workflow. I was still experimenting with how I organize a project, and this internship is where that started to take shape.