Cynical old hack that I am, I always get a sinking feeling when I hear about large public institutions attempting to “engage with young urban audiences”. So it was with a resigned air that I opened an email headed “Fallon creates cutting edge music partnerships to bring urban youth to Tate Modern”.

When Jonathan Ellery, founder of London design studio Browns, received an email from a recent placement student, he was expecting the usual note of gratitude for providing some invaluable experience. But instead of a friendly “thanks for the opportunity”, the fresh-out-of-college graduate had taken it upon herself to offer her advice on how to run his studio. “I was absolutely astonished,” says Ellery. “I felt for her really because she’s in for a shock. I don’t know where that level of arrogance comes from but I find it baffling.”

On Creative Review we have had some brilliant placement students – both designers and journalists. But we’ve had our fair share of disasters along the way too: the girl who alternated between floods of tears and snoring over her desk until prodded awake; another who kept a calendar next to her monitor on which she would cross off each day until her purgatory was at an end (her last day was outlined in pink stars). And several who went out for lunch and never came back.

The placement experience cuts both ways of course. Tales abound of students being given nothing more challenging to do than clean out a cupboard or get the tea. But doing a placement remains the best means of securing that all-important first design job.

As this year’s flood of new graduates hits the labour market, they could do worse than check out a book of practical advice from which Ellery’s anecdote comes.

Bob Dylan has dipped his toe into the advertising world once again, with this new ad promoting Apple’s iPod and iTunes as well as his new album Modern Times. Perhaps a more natural fit than his other recent ad foray, for US lingerie store Victoria’s Secret, the spot keeps it simple, showing Dylan playing single Someday Baby against a stark white background. So far, so good, but the addition of Apple’s trademark dancers jars a bit.

Befuddled travellers on the London Underground are currently being helped on their way with free, fold-out maps bearing this distinctive interpretation of the famous Tube Map by artist David Shrigley

OK, so it’s not meant as an alternative to Harry Beck’s map (the original masterpiece of information design can be found on the reverse) but Shrigley’s impassioned scrawl does offer an apposite, present-day response to the rational certainties implied by Beck. The latter’s original map was introduced in 1931 and, although updated several times since, the core design has endured. The network, however, has not aged so well. Beck’s map was introduced at a time of great confidence and pride in the Tube. Under Frank Pick’s direction it became world-renowned for every aspect of its design. Beck’s map exuded authority and control – getting from A to B was simply a matter of following its colour-coded tendrils.

But now, when Londoners and visitors alike are forced daily to run a gauntlet of the line closures, suspensions, signal faults and security alerts that are endemic in the ailing network, Beck’s confidence seems sadly misplaced. It’s Shrigley’s chaos that more closely portrays what it feels like to use the Tube in 2006.

Brighton’s Studio Tonne have just released another gem of interactivity entitled A Day at the Studio.

We’re not quite sure if it offers the most accurate picture of life down at Paul Farrington’s studio (surely they can’t spend all day hitting each other, eating wasabi or chewing on tin foil) but as the latest installment in Farrington’s range of Sound Toys, A Day… is an addictive little game where you can sequence your own sound compositions via a fruit-machine like interface. To make different sounds appear you have to select an Endurance! style challenge for each designer. Go on, make him eat the lemon again!