David Byron, Manager of Design and Innovation at Sundberg-Ferar was invited to Keego Harbor’s Roosevelt Elementary School to share Industrial Design with second grade students. David has extensive experience teaching advanced design skills as a professor at Detroit’s College of Creative Studies. However, for this audience, David started at the very beginning, when a passion for design took hold of him when he was just about their age.
Sundberg-Ferar has enjoyed a close relationship with Roosevelt Elementary in recent years through their participation in the Michigan Design Prize. The school was one of the first to embrace this annual competition held by the Michigan Design Council – an organization in which Sundberg-Ferar is deeply involved.
The Michigan Design Council was created for the purpose of celebrating and retaining industrial design talent within the state. Sundberg-Ferar’s Chief Innovation Officer and VP, Jeff Deboer, is chairman of the Council, and Michelle Zurowick, Design Researcher at Sundberg-Ferar is on the Board of Directors. Sundberg-Ferar designers also play an active role in the program each year through providing one-on-one design mentorship to the winning students.
The competition is crucial to promoting design thinking as an essential skill in our education systems. Since the competition’s inception in 2015, Roosevelt Elementary has shown overwhelming enthusiasm for the vision of design in Michigan – starting with the very youngest students.
Today, in front of about 40 young, expectant faces, David began with what it means to be a designer. He and the students read this definition together: Anyone who tries to solve a problem by making something…is a designer. Starting with the principle that design is for everyone, he then explained what lead him to industrial design at a young age.
Before he became interested in designing cars, David actually wanted to be a paleontologist. The kids’ reaction was electric when he explained that paleontology was like what they did in Jurassic Park! However, from when he was their age, his passion for cars took over, and it eventually lead him to pursue Transportation Design at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies.
David retold how he was able to achieve his dream through industrial design, and he showed the actual Mustang and Saleen supercar that he himself penned! He was quick to point out to the students that, of course, he didn’t do it alone. Big projects like this take big teams (more than 30 people!) and a long time to complete compared with what they might be used to. From sharing work in car design, to his work in sports equipment design, to talking with the students about this year’s Michigan Design Prize competition, discussing the design thinking process, passing around real 3D-printed prototypes for the kids to touch and feel, and sketching a car on the flipchart for the whole group to see – David’s time with these students was an action-packed blast!
It is always a joy to share our passion for Industrial Design with the future generation. Knowing that these children will grow up with an awareness of the amazing power of design – something many of us only discovered much later in life – is wonderful to see. Watching these students’ faces light up as David showed them what is possible with Industrial Design and design thinking is why we love what we do as Designers.