Design Thinking and Strategy Lead UT Senior to an IBM Internship

When tackling an advertising degree, it might not seem like hands-on design skills are necessary. But University of Texas senior Emmy Chen discovered how valuable pairing the two can be - not only through her coursework, but also in a corporate setting.

Chen arrived at UT as an advertising major, but design had always pulled at her. After her freshman year, she applied for the competitive double major and joined the design school's cohort a year behind her original class. Now heading into her senior year, with an anticipated Spring 2027 graduation, Chen is earning both a B.A. in design and a B.S. in advertising. She credits the pairing with giving her an edge few of her peers have.

"Having those technical skills in design and having it transfer to advertising was super helpful," Chen said, pointing to typography, layout, color theory and a trained visual eye as skills she carried from her design coursework into her advertising classes. Not only was she developing advertising strategies, but she also could build them from scratch.

That foundation followed her outside the classroom, too. As the editor-in-chief of Spark Magazine, Chen trains fellow designers in Adobe InDesign and Illustrator while also coordinating photographers, writers and models. Her efforts culminate in a finished, print-ready biannual publication each semester. She also put those skills to work as a creative student associate with Healthyhorns, where she designed visual touchpoints to help students navigate healthcare services on campus.

This summer, that same skillset carried her into one of the most competitive rooms she's been in yet: a visual design internship at Blue Studio, IBM's in-house creative agency. Chen is the only visual designer on a small, cross-functional team that also includes a copywriter, a content strategist and a motion designer. The group was assigned one project to focus on over the course of the 10-week internship: transform dense IBM thought-leadership reports into digestible content C-suite executives will engage with.

The work has been largely self-directed, with Chen and her team defining their own process through weeks of stakeholder conversations before presenting a midpoint update directly to one of the company's vice presidents. It's a level of ownership that's changed how she sees herself.

"I feel so confident that I can explain this project, the intricacies of it, how my impact is really changing things," Chen said. "I did something real."

Much of that readiness, she said, traces back to UT. Design fundamentals such as color theory and typography were exactly what her IBM interviewers highlighted in her portfolio review. The constant group work built into both her design and advertising coursework mirrored the collaborative pace of Blue Studio.

But it's design thinking, she said, that's proven the most valuable - and the most underrated. While it may sound like a simple notion, Chen emphasizes, "design thinking is something that's not very intuitive." She first encountered the concept during her freshman year in a course offered to all majors through the Center for Integrated Design, and it's stuck with her ever since. She shares that a designer mindset applies far beyond visual work. She has started asking why before how and considering the effects of every choice.

It's a habit of mind Chen thinks any student could benefit from, design major or not. "It's helpful just to see life like a designer," she said, "realizing that everything impacts people." She suggests students from all majors take an Integrated Design (ITD) elective, not to learn software, but to pick up a way of approaching problems that carries into any field.

As she enters her final year, with two capstone projects ahead, Chen carries that mentality with her. Her journey is proof that UT's design and advertising programs, together, prepared her for far more than the classroom.