Nutricost

The job was label redesigns — not net-new design, but updating existing products to meet current regulatory requirements while refreshing the visual direction. Every label has to balance the same tension: the front needs to sell the product on a crowded Amazon listing, and the back needs to fit FDA-mandated supplement facts, ingredient lists, allergen warnings, and legal disclaimers into a space that doesn't want them.

The production queue moved fast. Labels came in batches — sometimes a dozen variants of the same product (different flavors, sizes, counts) that all needed to stay visually consistent while each getting individual regulatory review. The creative director set the brand direction; my job was to execute within it and flag anything that didn't work.

This was my first time designing inside someone else's system at production speed. School projects give you a blank canvas and unlimited time. This was the opposite — an established brand, real constraints, and a queue that expected output every day.

The biggest lesson was that production design is a different discipline than concept design. The creative director wasn't looking for my best ideas — they were looking for consistency, accuracy, and speed. Knowing when to execute within a system and when to push back on it is a skill I didn't have before this internship. The work isn't flashy, but the thinking behind it is real — and it ships.