Here at Quirk eMarketing we have been watching Twitter with interest after releasing information about the Africhic “Style our Site” Web Design Competition yesterday. A number of tweets have expressed disapproval of Quirk’s involvement in this project. Quirk is offering a year’s paid internship to the fashion or design student who produces the winning artwork for the redesign of African luxury fashion eBoutique Africhic.com

Several tweets have been made asking South African Designers not to participate in our competition, with references to arguments made in number of blog posts that this is a cheeky way of getting professional or freelance designers to do spec work for free.

This reveals a major misunderstanding as to the purpose of the competition. Quirk sees this competition first as a way of finding a talented graduate for our internship programme and second, to allow creative students to showcase their work to the greater community, get some real world experience and hopefully a real world job. It’s like a creative job application. As an aside, all Quirk applicants are required to demonstrate their skills, from PPC Stars doing a quick online test, to planners presenting digital strategies.

The real incentive for entering this competition is not for the R5000 shopping spree, which is awesome, but rather the year-long paid internship at Quirk 

This competition is aimed at high school art students and tertiary level design students, and anyone else with an eye for fashion and a vision to add a new layer of meaning to tired stereotypes of African design. It is unsurprising that most of the awareness for the competition has been driven through design schools, where lecturers are keen to give their students a chance to build a portfolio of work through exercises like this. 

Almost every design school already has these sorts of programs and this is our attempt to help provide the climate where great student work is acknowledged. There are loads of great minds out there but very often they just don't get spotted. 

The truth remains that this is a competitive industry and for students with little or no experience, opportunities are hard to come by. We believe and have seen for ourselves that students are hungry for a chance to shine and a chance to gain experience at our agency, which is regarded as one of the best agencies in the land to pick up cutting-edge digital skills. 

The Quirk Internship is a highly prized opportunity and candidates have been known to go to extraordinary lengths to secure their spot. Andrew Kirkby, for example, produced this exemplary digital CV, which won our attention. Stacey Hutton produced this amusing Hitler meme clip to get selected, and other Quirk Studlings have all had to prove their mettle through a rigorous selection process for the privilege of working in the agency and learning from the experienced QuirkStars.

The Quirk Internship is an intensive year’s training and interns are paid and are highly valued. 

The Africhic contest is another way Quirk is going about sifting the wheat from the chaff in the hunt for the next QuirkStar. Entrants are not expected to have any professional skills, and they are required to produce flat art, not a fully functioning website. The winner will be involved in the process of turning their artwork into a coded website, which will be part of their training process.

The entrants will be judged by luminaries in the local fashion scene including Robyn Cooke, fashion Editor of O Magazine and Style Guide Cape Town. They will have the additional opportunity of building a profile for themselves in the fashion world. 

Africhic satisfies a unique niche in the local Web, showcasing local and African fashion design talent, and Quirk is proud to support their search for new flavour, in as much as we search for our own. 

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