Bridge

Bridge is a weekly meeting of designers that is designed to help experienced designers get their foot in the door with some of the top startup companies in the San Francisco Bay area. Designers that have over five years of experience in the field are encouraged to apply to join the Bridge Program. Once inside, Bridge Fellows attend meetings that are geared toward helping designers understand how to create engaging products for consumers and lead their design teams to success. Each Tuesday night, a new speaker will present a topic at a new restaurant in an intimate setting where Bridge Fellows can ask questions, comment about their experiences, and learn new design techniques to stay on the cutting edge of the mobile world. Many Bridge Fellows who join the program end up landing jobs one of the more than 30 startup companies that have a partnership agreement with Bridge. In fact, the Bridge application can serve as a standard application to any one of the participating partner companies listed on the Bridge website. Once a person fills out an application to join the program, Bridge will contact them via email to let them know if they've been accepted into the program or not. Bridge places no restrictions on whether or not you can apply to companies that don't participate in the program, so there's no downside to doing so if you're in the Bay Area. If for some reason your application to join the Bridge program isn't accepted, you can work on your portfolio and re-submit it at a later date for acceptance into the program. It's worth noting that the Bridge program itself isn't an internship, but rather a professional development program that's designed to connect designers. College graduates are encouraged to apply, but on average most professionals within the Bridge network have at least five years of experience in the design industry.