This week, Sundberg-Ferar hosted students from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies at their Walled Lake studio for an afternoon of insight in the practice and profession of Industrial Design. The visit was a chance for 16 budding industrial designers to get a taste of the day-to-day rhythm of an industrial design consultancy and at what their professional lives may look like one day. It was also an opportunity for them to be inspired with the broad reach of Sundberg-Ferar’s design influence over the studio’s 85-year legacy, and by the extraordinary everyday creativity that characterizes the SF team and indeed, all excellent industrial designers. Not only that, exposing students to the world of industrial design in this way ultimately encourages and helps retain the industrial design talent we have here in Michigan.
The class visiting Sundberg-Ferar last week included junior industrial design students from the “design seminar” elective taught by CCS’s Chair of Product Design, Vincenzo Iavicoli. The class consists of visits to local design studios in both corporate and independent settings to gain a better understanding of Detroit’s design landscape and the professional world. With over a dozen designers in the room, you can bet the afternoon was chalk full of good questions, great discussion and plenty of inspiration for these future industrial designers to chew on.
Jeevak, SF’s Principal and Director of Strategic Growth, lead the visit and began by taking a census of all the questions in the students’ minds. The questions concerned Industrial Design in general, Sundberg-Ferar, our innovation process, consultancy studios, and anything else the students wanted to ask of the design studio that practically pioneered the profession west of the Atlantic. Then, Jeevak shared the studio’s design methodology while weaving in the answers to the student’s questions as he went. After that, it was time for the students to see the real-life results of that methodology for themselves by taking a tour of the studio.
The students could see the evolution of prototypes that lead to a finished product, experience the different parts of the studio where the steps of the design process are carried out – from 2D sketching to conducting focus groups to synthesizing design research, to 3D sketching and prototyping and more – and they could get a glance of individual team members doing their work. Although perhaps unsure at first in an unfamiliar setting, the students’ eyes lit up as they looked at the low-fidelity models made by our world-class designers themselves, the one-way mirror glass used for focus group viewing, historical products designed by Sundberg-Ferar in decades past, and the accouterments scattered in the individual workspaces of designers – all bits and pieces of current and past projects.
Apart from student visits to the studio, Sundberg-Ferar has been a long-time supporter of industrial design talent in the state through a triangulation of initiatives. The studio played an instrumental part in founding the Michigan Design Council (MDC), an entity focused on the celebration and retention of industrial design talent in Michigan, and the studio is also involved in the annual Michigan Design Prize competition and mentorship program run by the MDC. The Michigan Design Prize recognizes excellent design concepts from young students and awards competition winners with one-on-one design mentorship from the state’s top professional designers including those from the SF team. Sundberg-Ferar also gives in-depth, real-world work experience to exceptional industrial design students through internship opportunities where they benefit from the studio’s unique perspective that only comes from practicing human-centric design since 1934.
The College for Creative Studies itself is known throughout the nation for its Industrial Design programs. Founded in Detroit in 1906, CCS has been an important historic player in the talent pipeline for Michigan’s creative fields and the transportation industry in particular. Now, the college offers world-class education in Advertising Design, Art Education, Crafts, Entertainment Arts, Fashion Accessories Design, Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interior Design, Photography, Product Design and Transportation Design and more. To learn more about CCS, click here.
The afternoon was a productive time of exposing these blossoming students to what their future of professional design could look like and inspiring them with the power of industrial design at the second longest standing independent industrial design studio in the nation. Sundberg-Ferar is proud and excited to host students like these to bolster and feed their talent, all the while showing them how they can use their abilities to create products and services that will raise the standard of living for all humanity.