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Skills and purpose

I enjoy teaching design (intro through graduate courses) as an opportunity to share and explore the relationship between skill development and why we do this. The purposes design serves are what makes the field a calling, and actually making things keeps the magic happening. Skills that are tangible such as drawing, working with typography, composition and fabrication processes, are things to master, knowing there is always more to learn. People skills and team skills make both projects and life more satisfying. Design thinking, combined with nimble technology use become everpresent extra balls in the air.

For The Building Conference and Expo, we worked with a partner to create the branding, programming and expereince design that would encourage reluctant participants in the green wave to come to a conference on green building and community building. Once there, we wanted them to  melt some stereotypes and enjoy themselves. This is the branding and program cover created by one of the grad students on the team, Forrest Conroy.

For projects this large, we get lots of people involved. The senior class developed artifacts that fulfilled some of the touchpoints on the Service Map. We made a lot of DIY pieces to teach design thinking and encourage recycling and repurposing for the attendees. It required paper engineering and silkscreening and late night sweatshop work ethic.

Here are some of the products created in multiiples of 200: Architecture awards, packaging for the conference materials, sponsor thank-you cards, program, post cards, nametags.