A Final Thought

VALUE INTERNS

It’s the time of the year when thousands of students flock to job boards in search of the perfect internship, many hoping for the opportunity to finally start paying off their loans. One would think that in 2020 most companies and design studios would be offering paid internships. It’s surprising to see how many aren’t.

Five years ago, I was the internship coordinator at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Industrial Design program. Even then, the number of unpaid internships that came to my inbox was astounding. Luckily for the students, the school had a strict policy of rejecting these opportunities, viewing them as harmful to student growth and development.

I recently spoke with Norio Fujikawa about his thoughts on unpaid internships and found that his view of interns is admirable. As the executive creative director of Astro Studios, a prestigious design firm in San Francisco, he gets hundreds of applicants for their yearly internship program. He conducts his interviews for the intern position the same as he would for a full-time position, because everyone, even interns, are a part of the design team. Intern or not, they are contributing to the work, and therefore, he believes, they should be compensated. He added, “I just don’t see an unpaid internship opportunity ever happening in San Francisco. Not only is it impossible to live here without getting paid, it’s just unethical. It’s also detrimental to the profession.”

Meanwhile, in another expensive city across the country, a counterargument is being made. New York–based industrial designer Karim Rashid made waves in the design community by defending the use of unpaid internships, claiming that the professional experience is much more valuable and less exploitive than paying to learn at an expensive university.

Even with the caveat of a three-month limit on an unpaid internship and the possibility of a stipend, I am baffled by this ideology. A major issue here is definitely the cost of education, but even so, the target population for internships can’t live humanely without an income, even for just three months. Whether a recent graduate or current student, it’s more than likely that they’re barely meeting their financial obligations, if at all.

Internships exist because there is value in teaching students and recent graduates how to navigate the professional world of design. The whole point is to give them the opportunity to be a part of it, to mentor them and to give them the confidence to showcase their talents, even if they’re still working on improving them. In a field that relies so much on talent and creativity, young designers need to learn how to fairly and competitively value their work within the safe walls of an internship. And for that reason, it’s truly a disservice to put interns in a position where they are expected to work alongside professionals but not be compensated for their contributions.

We should be asking ourselves, How much do we value interns? And further, how much do we value the next generation of designers? How much do we value the future of our field?

—Hector Silva, IDSA hello@advdes.org

Stay Curious.