SUMMER DESIGN CAMP
This summer I had the privilege of returning to my alma mater, NC State University's College of Design, to teach the day camp Graphic Design studio to high school-aged campers. These young minds were ready to learn about design, and each day they experienced a studio focused on a different discipline offered by the college: architecture, landscape architecture, industrial design, art + design, and graphic design.
In the graphic design studio, campers worked to design a brand identity for a food truck company that sold Chicago-style hot dogs. Lesson one: what is a brand identity? And lesson two: what is a Chicago-style hot dog?
Over the course of a week, we had 100 campers participate in the studio, and each day they became more confident speaking the language of design: process, composition, materials, and most of all, critique. Or as the kids say now, "crit."
In studio, I found that we most often spoke to these themes:
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1 :: CONSTRAINTS MAKE YOU CREATIVE.
If you are making design without constraints, you're probably more making art. Constraints like budgets, format, print specs or legibility requirements (and so many more), make a designer more creative, and focuses the design process on the challenge at hand to create a product better suited to solve that challenge.
2 :: BEFORE YOU'RE A GRAPHIC DESIGNER, YOU'RE A DESIGNER.
In essence, designers are designers first, and specialists second. Particularly in a design program like the College of Design's, students are taught design process, and that process is what makes Designers with a capital "D". Once a baseline of design fundamentals have been introduced, then one chooses a discipline to pursue, whether it be architecture, industrial design, graphic design, etc. This common process is the reason that Michael Graves can design buildings, teapots, and toilet brushes for Target. Process.
3 :: DESIGN IS NOT DECORATION.
Yes -- your design might look great, but form + function is the name of the game in design. Design that looks great and addresses the challenge at hand -- whether in construction, product development or communications -- will be more apt to succeed.
4 :: DESIGN CAN HAVE GREAT IMPACT. (aka a story about Harri Boller and JCPenney)
As part of talking to campers about exactly what is graphic design and then brand identity, we would talk about the JCPenney logo designed by Harri Boller while he was at Unimark (it was just redesigned this year, however). I told them a story about how when I discovered that my design mentor had designed this logo and worked on the entire identity, it really struck me. I can still remember being about seven years old and walking through the JCPenney store at North Hills Mall in Raleigh -- the sign on the building, the elevator up/down signs, the tags on the clothes. Impact. It was amazing to me that twenty years prior a person I didn't know had designed things that had an impact on me to that day.
My point was to impress upon the campers that design can have long-reaching impact, even if the audience doesn't realize it at the time; and that no matter what it is you're creating, it has the potential to stay with people for a long time and in meaningful ways.
5 :: DESIGN IS MAKING STUFF :: MAKING STUFF IS FUN
To really succeed in design is to love it -- and live it. And know that every opportunity you have for a new project is an opportunity to put something great and worthwhile into the world. Whether it's a city park, a building for a corner drugstore, a pair of sneakers or a food truck identity, make it great, because what you put into the world matters.
–Cara Carpenter, Principal and Founder, Studio Pragmatik
