Carter's Field Trip

This past Friday the Materials & Techniques 1 class and a few other students went on a very informative and entertaining field trip to the headquarters of Carter's. Maker of all sorts of children's clothing. This is one of the many reason's that SCAD made the move to Atlanta. There are so many great companies here that SCAD alumni could actually work for or at the very least learn more about the many different possibilities of career's using your illustration degree. The idea came to go to Carter's was after talking with Brett Callero, Foundations Professor, at SCAD Atlanta. His ">fiancé Catherine works at Carters. So Brett and Catherine got me in touch with Alicia Moss, the Director of Recruitment, and we planned a company tour, pizza lunch and watched a video of the day in the life at Carters. Here are a few highlights. Click the photos to see them larger. Also, check out more photos of the tour here.

Top Creative Artists, Stewart Mills (SCAD Alumni), and Jason Oransky, showed us around the many different departments and explained the process of each.

Artist work spaces all run Macs not PC's. The main program they use is Adobe Illustrator.

This is a new room called "The Factory" where all the artist meet to discuss the looks a year in advance. Using "concept boards" They represent the first take on what the upcoming season should feel like. Depending on the feedback from the “creative committee”. A lot of that art is then developed further and will show up in the lines for that season.

Here Stewart is in "The Crib" talking about the different sleepwear designs and how they get picked.

They have a internal database called “The Digital Resource Library” where they can do keyword searches of past designs, patterns and illustrations. Some of the images are prints bought at trade conventions they attend annually. From the 100's that they see at trade show like Surtex they buy only 10-15 prints for inspiration at about $500-600 each. They put these images into the library for artist to use, not copy, for inspiration of new designs.
See these and more pictures here.


Even though the field trip did not have much to do with Materials and Techniques I, it was valuable insight into a career option for the Sophomores-Seniors that are in the class. They can start now building a portfolio of illustrations that would be appropriate for a company like Carter's before they graduate. For those students that could not make it you really missed out. Talk to students that went and you will see what I mean.

For now, Carter's is looking for recent graduates for a paid 3-6 month internship as a technical artist or creative artist. To find out more contact the SCAD Career Services. What they look for in a portfolio is diversity of style and most importantly is a few samples of illustrations that clearly has a Carter's look. They have to be done completely in Adobe Illustrator. Refer to the color handouts given to each of the students that went or with me.

Thanks,
Jay Montgomery
jmontgom@scad.edu