Apprentice with the studio.

What the apprenticeship is.

The studio takes one apprentice a year. The post is six months, residential where possible, and runs from the second week of January through the last week of June. The apprentice works alongside the principal on whichever engagement is in flight, contributes meaningfully to a deliverable, and is paid — actually paid — the London Living Wage, plus a small stipend toward materials.

The apprenticeship is not a portfolio review with extra steps. It is a working post. We expect taste, not credentials; a willingness to read slowly more than a demonstrable expertise. Career-changers, late starters, and the otherwise-mis-labelled are particularly welcome.

• Duration26 weeks · January — June
• ResidencyClerkenwell, London
• CompensationLondon Living Wage · materials stipend
• HoursStudio hours, slowly. No after-hours; no weekends.
• Posts per yearOne.

What we want, and don't.

We are most interested in: people who read books slowly; who have made one small thing carefully; who can describe their own previous work without product-management vocabulary; who have an opinion about a typeface, a piece of music, or a colour, and can defend it.

We are least interested in: portfolios of forty-eight projects; "moved the needle"; a stated career goal of becoming a Director of Design within five years.

You do not need to be a designer. We have, in past years, taken on a librarian, a former architect, and one furniture-maker. The role of the apprentice is to bring a different metabolism into the studio — not to look like the rest of us.

A short note will do.

Applications open at the start of the third quarter (July) and close at the end of the third quarter (September). We respond, by hand, during the second week of each fourth quarter. We acknowledge that this is inconvenient.