An internship exists to show a designer how their work creates value in the real world.
In school, design is often evaluated in isolation, with focus on concept, craft, and presentation. Internship places that work inside real contexts, with clients who have business goals to reach.
This is where an intern learns what they are contributing. For a client, contribution means design that clarifies ideas, communicates effectively, or solves a practical problem. For an employer, this means having reliable work that can effectively advance projects. For the intern, it means understanding how effort turns into outcomes, feedback strengthens work, and responsibility grows over time.
An internship is about learning how work moves from brief to delivery, how choices affect others, and how design holds up once it leaves the designer’s desk.
To learn this, interns need exposure to real projects and clear expectations. They also need structure, not as a fixed syllabus, but as clarity around how work happens, who reviews decisions, and what ownership looks like at each stage. Without this, experience stays task-driven, and learning remains limited.
We often explain a valuable internship through a simple analogy. Knowing design tools is like knowing the controls of a car. You understand the accelerator, clutch, brakes, steering, and indicators. You know what each part does.
An internship is learning to drive with someone experienced beside you. They guide your turns, help you read the road, and prompt you to think through your choices. Over time, working the clutch becomes muscle memory, the kind of understanding that comes only from practising on the road, much like design sense and intuition.
Real projects introduce open-ended problems, responsibility, and stakes. Interns grow when they experience all three, supported by mentorship that allows balanced learning with accountability
We think that there is a better way to look at the problem.
Internships (or apprenticeships, as we call them at Devalok) fall into two categories. Not paid and unpaid, but value-generating and non-value-generating.
Value-generating apprenticeships create value for both the apprentice and the mentor or studio, with economic value (aka money) emerging as a consequence.
Non-value-generating apprenticeships, on the other hand, are marked by the absence of solid projects, unclear or inconsistent feedback, unrealistic expectations, and the list goes on.
Now, let’s break down value-generating paid and unpaid apprenticeships.
In our conversations with apprentices at Devalok, there was strong agreement on one point. Unpaid internships felt acceptable when the learning came directly from senior designers or founders, and the work offered exposure to how the industry functions. For them, frustration emerged when those internships only asked for repetitive tasks and gave limited feedback, while their growth stalled.
For most students, unpaid internships make sense only at specific stages, typically during early college years, for short durations and with a clearly defined role. The equation shifts if they are relocating cities, managing rent, travel, and committing full-time hours. This makes unpaid roles impractical, and compensation becomes part of shared responsibility, both for the employer and for the apprentice.
There is also a common misunderstanding that interns who ask for compensation prioritise money over learning. Our experience shows the opposite. Design students are deeply motivated individuals. They actively seek working with real stakes because that is how they understand their own potential. They want to experience what real work feels like, to test their judgment, and to evaluate whether they are suited for the profession.
Money rarely sits at the centre of that motivation. It becomes relevant when learning carries absolute commitment with realities like rent, travel, and sustenance entering the picture. At that point, unpaid internships begin to exclude people from lower economic backgrounds, tying access to privilege rather than ability.
We are against unpaid internships that demand full-time commitment, contribute to live projects, or replace paid roles. They filter talent by who can afford to work for free, shutting capable designers out before they even have a chance to begin.
A significant number of early-career unpaid internships come from colleges that require students to earn course credits. But it is our firm belief that gaining early experience should not come from a place of compulsion.
Every designer should pursue real-world experience, regardless of academic credits. That becomes especially important for students outside formal design education.
Learning can begin locally, by working with neighbourhood cafés, kirana stores or small businesses and offering design support. While it isn’t the same as an apprenticeship, it still teaches communication, empathy, and value creation in ways no classroom brief can. Educational institutions should allow such work to count toward genuine academic credit, so students build practical skills through real engagement rather than falling into exploitative internships with limited outcomes.
Most of these concerning practices appear when large, profitable organisations offer unpaid internships as roles that mirror entry-level jobs without the learning structure or compensation. When work contributes to revenue or client outcomes, it carries economic value, and organisations with the capacity to pay should acknowledge that reality.
Design colleges must step in and take a clear stance against such organisations. This includes maintaining a shared, central directory of exploitative organisations, circulating it across institutions, and actively discouraging students from engaging with such roles. This could really help students feel empowered to question and call out environments that misuse learning as a cover for free labour.
We believe the word internship now covers everything from structured learning environments to roles where young designers temporarily fill gaps in production. At Devalok, we call early-career roles apprenticeships.
We are aware that the term apprenticeship carries its own historical associations. That is not the model we follow. For us, apprenticeship means a contemporary, studio-led learning approach that is clearly defined, mentored and always paid.
In practice, an apprenticeship at Devalok is a mutual commitment. The studio takes responsibility for shaping learning and growth. The apprentice takes responsibility for showing up with accountability and care for the craft.
Our stance on hiring interns is simple, and what we advise other studios as well: Intent matters more than labels.
If the intention is to temporarily fill someone’s shoes or keep work moving without the ability to compensate their effort, the role should not exist. Internship works when the intention is to uplift a budding designer, invest in their growth, and create value for the apprentice, the studio, the client, and the work itself.
Our apprentices work on projects with real stakes. They contribute to active projects, communicate with clients, and experience the pressure that comes with it. But they also work within a safety net.
We believe paid internships support healthier learning environments in general and especially once work carries responsibility and consequence, and interns are trusted with execution and ownership. Unpaid internships support learning best when education remains the clear focus and expectations stay limited, but at all times, these internships should be value-generating.
What defines a good internship is intent, structure, and accountability. If these don’t align, no label or compensation can justify the experience. This is a distinction the broader design ecosystem, across education and industry, needs to take seriously.
