Dan Mall: Replacing the Internship with Apprenticeship

About this presentation
In the creative world, you go to school and learn your craft then enter the field to do your work. However, this straight edge process has left out a middle phase for the educated people that need to learn by doing (because the jobs they want are only available for the already qualified candidate). Superfriendly Director, Dan Mall proposes an apprenticeship as that middle phase - a nine-month program dedicated to teaching the young and talented designer to inevitably be that qualified candidate. The trade: Mall gets loyalty from the apprentice while spending less on talent, while the apprentice walks away with a new skill for work and life.
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About Dan Mall
Dan Mall is a creative director and advisor from Philly. He is the director of SuperFriendly, a design collaborative that brings exquisite creative direction and design to the world’s most important and interesting organizations. Dan is a husband and dad and co-founder of Typedia (an encyclopedia for typefaces) and Businessology (a podcast and workshop series teaching designers how to run better businesses). He writes about design and other issues on Twitter and on his industry-recognized site, danielmall.com.
About 99U
The 99U delivers the action-oriented education that you didn't get in school, highlighting real-world best practices for making ideas happen.

[@michaelmirchandani]

As a recent graduate on the hunt, I was really inspired to see this video. Its great to see that some employers are focused on growing with employees together, and have a long term vision that is beneficial for both the company and the new employee. Big thanks to Dan Mall, this is an awesome talk :)