It is difficult to sum up the entirety of the Three×3 experience in a few sentences but I’ll do my best. The first and probably most important thing I have to mention is the people I met in my time doing the Three×3 internship. As I come from and studied in Cork I didn’t know anyone when I moved to Dublin, but as I went through each studio I got to know another group of welcoming, hard-working, talented and inspiring people who really made the experience of working and learning an enjoyable one. This is a group of designers who love what they do, which creates a higher standard in their work and being an intern you can really sense and feed from that as a source of inspiration and a level of craft that I hope to achieve at some stage of my career.

Also being able to experience such a variety of studio environments was fantastic, the diverse range of projects, different approaches to design, studio management, how work is delegated, different processes of idea generation, client interaction. During the internship you get take part in each of these in some way but there is no hand-holding, which is great. You become a functioning member of the studio managing your own projects, interacting with clients, sitting in on meetings, it really provides you with a fuller understanding of all areas of design and design as a business which is not something in my case I learnt about in college.

There are a number of more strands to my experience not to mention those I’ve met from other studios and current students who share this mindset towards design, there is a great design community in Dublin. I have to thank Brian, Paul, Ciarán, David, Oran and everyone involved in creating the Three×3 programme and introducing me to this community, as a student I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to the design world it was a great experience and one that undoubtedly made me a better designer.