Education

Pushing Boundaries

“Today more than ever, industrial designers are in a unique position to facilitate a change in the world. Our role as advocates of the user and their needs leaves us with a great opportunity to create powerful product experiences that push the boundaries currently defined.”

—Tanner Wills, IDSA, IDSA West District Student Merit Award Winner

Impact in ID

“We see how important design—not just industrial but all design—is becoming in our world. It leads to some of the most successful businesses; it solves some terrible and tragic problems facing our world; and it can lead to simple improvements in what people use every day. Design is not only a tool but a way of thinking and we are only beginning to shed light on its understanding and value. That's what is so exciting about it. It’s something so defined, yet so undefined, and in some ways we are pioneers to this conversation.”

Passion for ID

“I started backpacking and cycling at a young age and haven’t really stopped since. These gear-based passions made me very aware of the objects I was using. I found ceramics my senior year in high school which opened me up to the arts and creating. After that, the idea of blending my passion took hold.”

—Patrick Shields, IDSA, 2016 Central District Student Merit Award Winner

ICFF Honors RIT ID

Rochester Institute of Technology industrial design students came away with a major award from the 2016 International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City. RIT’s Metaproject 06 booth received the ICFF Editors’ Award—Best School, which recognizes innovative designs at ICFF. Five editors canvassed more than 700 booths on two floors of the Javits Convention Center to determine this year’s winners.

Intrigued by ID

“There is no better time than now to be an industrial designer.”

—Elvin Chu, IDSA, South District Student Merit Award Winner

The H Factor

“I'm very intrigued with the human factor elements of design. I love being able to see my user’s reaction and feedback toward my iterative concepts.”

—Lino Cantarella, IDSA, 2016 IDSA Northeast District Student Merit Award Winner

Mission to Mars

Pratt Institute is one only of a handful of universities selected in 2016 to participate in NASA’s eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge—part of the space agency’s goal to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s.

ID for Young Minds

ID is the focus of a new summer camp for middle and high school students near Detroit. Henry Ford College in Dearborn, MI is offering students ages 14 to 17 the chance to gain the design and technical skills needed to excel in the field of industrial design in the camp led by TechShop Detroit.

Design is that Word

Georgia Tech has renamed its College of Architecture, the College of Design, and calls the new name "a better reflection of our academic diversity; a more accurate description of what drives our research; and an idea that unites all five schools in the college."

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