 |
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
Order Reprints
Follow @MiBiz
By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
GRAND RAPIDS — How does a design concept become a finished product?
That process is a major component of design education at Kendall College of Art and Design. Luckily for the students, the academic institution has strong ties to the local office furniture industry and is located close to its major trade show, not to mention it’s created a way for students to gain firsthand design experience closer to Grand Rapids and at the same time help out local organizations in need.
Every year for about the past 15 years, students in various design disciplines have made the trip to Chicago for the National Exposition of Contract Furnishings World Trade Fair (NeoCon), the major tradeshow for the contract and office furniture industry. While there, they get a chance to look around the various displays at the Merchandise Mart, but they’re also tasked to study the broader design considerations of the various showrooms, the products themselves and the marketing materials, said Michelle Kleyla, adjunct faculty in interior design at Kendall.
The focus for students is to be strategic in gleaning as much knowledge as they can about what goes into the entire design process. When designing the program, Kleyla was tasked with finding a way to “make the experience for students not only meaningful because they get to go to Chicago and see the Merchandise Mart and the companies, but how to make it meaningful from a design standpoint,” she told MiBiz. “We talk about the big umbrella of design. All of those facets are an important part of NeoCon.
“Just because you’re in interior design doesn’t mean you’re only concerned with interior design. This is a great venue for them to go out and see all those things, especially in a showroom environment, which is an environment for the manufacturers to put their best foot forward and show their product offering.”
Students have to interview people about the products and the displays. In ideal cases, they get to talk to the designer about the product and what it took to bring it to production and make it showroom-ready. They also have the opportunity to hear about the manufacturer’s branding process and other business angles important for a major product launch, Kleyla said.
After those interviews and touring the Mart, students then regroup and get a chance to hear an in-depth presentation from one of the manufacturers focused on a particular aspect of the business.
What’s becoming an increasingly common message among all designers, she said, was that the lines of individual design disciplines are blurring. An architect may design a building for a healthcare organization, but frequently that also means focusing on hospitality and other non-healthcare features.
“They’re learning through observation, and how that addresses the bottom line business needs of that client, whether it’s a JW Marriott or Hewlett Packard,” she said.
Olivia Synder, associate professor and program chair of Kendall’s interior design program, said the value of the NeoCon experience is that students get to interact with the businesses and the designers, and that makes for a much more “meaningful” experience than just reading a design study on a website or in a textbook.
“Now that we require them to interview people in the showroom, it helps them to make connections and start networking and speaking to these companies,” Snyder told MiBiz. “Their journal of extraordinary designs … ends up becoming a piece they can show in their own portfolios. It’s a really nice capture of the experience itself and of focusing on design thinking.”
The college also realizes the importance of getting students into more hands-on, experience-based learning opportunities that can have professional applications. No offense to companies in West Michigan, Kleyla and Snyder said, but it’s tough for students to find internships that help them acquire new professionally relevant skills.
“(A business is) in the midst of projects for paying clients, and they’re under the gun, so it’s challenging for them to take a student with no professional experience and get them up to speed (to work on the project),” Kleyla said. “I have the luxury.”
Two years ago, Kendall connected with a program run by Asset Network for Education Worldwide that looked for furniture and fixtures that companies were discarding so that the pieces could be repurposed for a nonprofit organization in need.
“The big guiding principle is that we’d rather see it go to a nonprofit than a landfill,” Kleyla said. “It’s doing what’s right with what’s left.”
The interior design program proposed that the college hire some student interns to work on the project, and Kendall President Oliver Evans supported the idea, paying the students as college intern employees.
To date, Kleyla said the students have successfully collected and placed seven truckloads of furniture that was no longer being used by the donor organization and helped spread it out to various community organizations. Importantly, the students then get the opportunity to practice design consultation by using the pieces they receive and designing a space for the nonprofit organization.
“They take what they have to work with and make something wonderful for the new group,” she said. Currently, students are working with Mel Trotter Ministries and Alpha Women’s Center in Grand Rapids.
“The real win for us is that the students are paid by the college and the goal is to find meaningful internship experience for them,” Snyder said. “One graduating senior really grew from this experience. She credits the experience for really putting meaning into her design life. She said she got confident with the skills and put meaning to skills.”
We take our search engine experience so much for granted that it can be hard to see with clear eyes. Consider this: The dead-simple process of googling something actually has four distinct phases. First, you arrive at the URL and[…]