Mercy

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the ‘intern project’ for want of a much better title is us trying to do something productive and fruitful with emerging creative talent, rather than have them loiter by the magazines waiting for home time.

Having spoken to lots of new designers, we realised that the skills they feel they’re lacking are the exact skills that they’re not being taught in art school - doing shit and getting it out there.  So the plan is for us to help nine new designers and three emerging writers run a series of projects over the next twelve months. They’ll be split into three groups and each given four months to produce two pieces of work that have a base in great design and experimental language. We originally said this should be a zine, but given the amazing quality of their work, we’ve decided to shut up and let them do what they want.

To help them on their journey to enlightenment, we’re going to provide our team of interns with workshops from organisations whom we really admire. People like Shellsuit Zombie, OWT Creative, Textbook Studio and Fever Zine will be sharing the ancient secrets of getting shit done.

From the business end, we also thought it would be a great idea to teach them how to run a studio, which will involve helping them generate their own work, managing that work and using the money they earn for good, not evil.

They could learn a lot from the experience and go on to have amazing careers. Or they could rise up against us and over throw the old Mercy order, asserting their independence in a bloody coup. It’s a step into the unknown for all of us really. We’re going to introduce you to the new team over the next few days. They’re all quite brilliant.