Lana Belasic ’10: First Job

I design licensed adult watches for Sanrio (Hello Kitty). Every season, I watch for trends and create new concepts and designs. I am constantly in contact with agents in our Hong Kong office who help with manufacturing samples and products.

I spend most of the workweek in our Long Island City office. Retailers, such as Kohl’s, Macy’s, Sears and Walmart, usually come to us with specific requests for their stores. Once the designs are finished and approved in-house, I send them to Sanrio’s office in Los Angeles for approval and then for sampling. The styles are shown to the retailers and, hopefully, orders get placed. 

On occasion, I head over to our Manhattan showroom, especially during the weeks prior to Market Week. (Market Week is the time when retailers go to showrooms to pick out what they would like to order for their stores.) In the showroom, I switch out old samples, rearrange collections and change the wall displays. 

Our entire team consists of 14 people. There are two other designers for adult watches, and we each work on different licenses, including Disney and Mattel. When some licenses or projects need immediate attention, we help each other out. 

My office is pretty laid back. I am very fortunate to have a boss who knows how to balance a fun and creative environment with getting work done efficiently. Some days can be very intense with deadlines and orders, but there are slower moments as well. When something has to get done, we can be at the office until nighttime. We don’t just clock out at 5:30 p.m. every day. 

I got this job by searching websites that are specific to careers in the creative field. It took about six months of really looking and shooting out résumés everywhere just to get an interview.

Adelphi has a great art program with caring and inspiring professors. They help you build a solid art foundation that prepares you for any challenge you have to tackle. I had an amazing internship with Cosmopolitan magazine while at Adelphi. I learned from that experience that I didn’t want to do editorial design. It helped me decide where I wanted to go instead.

I hope to stay in the field of industrial design and continue designing products and packaging. My ultimate goal is to become an art director.

Lana Belasic ’10 (B.F.A. in Graphic Design) is a Junior Designer at MZ Berger and CO.