Summer Intern Programme 2009

For the last two years we have hosted interns during the summer (April to September) who work on specific research and development projects. The aim is to give students or recent graduates the opportunity to spend time working on a project with the full support of Pli’s resources, that will develop their practical experience and knowledge. Interns have full responsibility for delivering the project’s aims and are encouraged to publish their findings on Pli’s ‘Inspiration’ blog site.

Pli’s workshop, summer 2008

Internships at Pli typically last one month to six weeks and are unpaid: we will reimburse travel expenses. As well as running their own projects, interns are also encouraged to get involved in our general design and business development work and are normally invited to join meetings with clients, suppliers and partners.

Projects

Here are the projects Pli wants to cover this year:

• Design for take-back and reuse
• Open-source product design methodologies
• Wiki sharing in creative industry project management
• Single-source recycled plastic research
• Junior designer for furniture design projects (SolidWorks)
• Market research for environmentally-friendly products
• Communication design for environmentally-friendly products

During 2008, we hosted four interns who worked on life-cycle analysis, wiki knowledge management, recycled material supply chains and packaging design projects, as well as assisting with our regular work and attending meetings with design and manufacturing partners.

If you are a course administrator and you would like to discuss the possibility of finding placements for your students, we’d like to discuss our research and development programme with you. Contact Pli with your ideas or questions.

Places are limited and we have room for just one intern at a time (four or five over the duration of the internship period between April and September) and we usually receive quite a large number of applicants.

We encourage applicants to send images of portfolio work and essays/papers that demonstrate serious interest in eco-friendly industrial design, material research or collaborative/open-source design processes. Internships are offered based on the quality and relevance of the work we see. Contact Pli to apply.