We recently kicked off our industrial design unit and after touring Cameron VanDyke’s studio we launched “The 4X8 Project,” a two month design challenge to make something from a single piece of 4X8 that solves a functional or aesthetic problem, that assembles using no hardware, and can easily be cut using a computer numerical control (CNC) machine.

After brainstorming we got down to the business of sketching.

One of my favorite thing about this project is that it forced us to rapidly prototype everything…pretty early in the process. Sketches are an excellent way of conveying ideas but when dealing with the structural integrity it’s best to let gravity point out areas in need of work instead of just theorizing about it. From there students went on to refine their design.

The above prototype was made by Tom. He estimated he could construct two units out of one 4X8 with minimal waste as a byproduct. A great solution.

It always amazes me how so many different solutions can be birthed out of the same design problem. Chicken coops. Shelves. Stools. Games. Shoes. Chairs. Tables. Table/Chair Combos. Etc.

A condensed list of student and leader submissions can be found on this month’s tee. We highly suggest you acquaint yourself with it. ;)

We’re kicking off 2012′s after school workshops with two months of product design. It’s only appropriate to start with a little clip of Steve Jobs, who, we would venture to say, changed the contemporary product landscape more than any other.

For us, it’s helpful to start with a framework: product design is all about problems. Everything that has ever existed has done so because it solved some sort of problem. Farms. Villages. Governments. Cave Paintings. Arrowheads. Ceramic Bowls. Domesticated Animals. Schools. Sparkling Non-Alcoholic Beverages. Etc.

Once you see the products you’re surrounded by as someone else’s solutions to problems it helps you think more critically about the questions you’re asking of your environment. That’s our goal with the product design workshops. What do we actually require of our surroundings? Do we need all that we have? Can we make things more specific to the problems we actually face everyday? What are those problems?

January we were lucky to visit the studio of Grand Rapids maker extraordinaire Cameron VanDyke. So fun! We couldn’t help but smile as approaching the doors of his studio we were greeted with the smell of fresh cut wood.

His studio was stocked with all the woodworking tools you could think of. Even more impressive was their organization.

Cameron always starts his projects by working in scale. The above project is one of my favorites – the hedge rack. Brilliant. One day we’ll have space and a budget. When that happens we’ll be rallying for this to be outside.

Cameron’s public furniture is second to none. Always approachable and fun…super interesting use of scale and materials. This is another one of my favorite pieces – Ice Jam Public Seating. Super fun.

There’s something alluring about wood – no other renewable material is so plentiful or flexible. It can be used for fuel, shelter, transportation, and food. Amazing. Equally alluring is someone who knows how to work with it. A tool for everything.

It was an awesome peek inside a craftsman’s studio. A big thank you to Cameron VanDyke for opening up his studio to our troupe of rebels that were tough enough to brave the weather.

So pumped about this. Geoffrey Holstad (guest artist & friend) has a new project that kicked off this morning at 5AM. Cabin Time.

Cabin-Time is a series of intense art-making excursions to remote locations in Michigan and beyond.  The project is loosely designed to be a focused creative experience, making site-specific and site-influenced artwork (personal and collaborative) in the company of your inspiring peers.  The trip itself and its documentation are as integral to the project as the work being made.

Four Days. Zero Showers. Eight Artists (four of whom we’ve been lucky enough to make tees with). Excited to see the body of work that comes out of the project. Some of our favorite people in attendance – Christina Mrozik, Geoffrey Holstad, Ryan Greaves, Adam Wolpa, Pat Perry, Sam Snedeker, Drew Melton, and Colin McCarthy. So great.

After our workshop with Rob & Lisa we wanted to create a simple framework to explore the concepts addressed. At the start of our Thursday session we watched the above video recapping Today, a project by one of my favorite designer/artists - Jonathan Harris. Afterwards we discussed his project and the constraints we’d like to impose on ourselves for ours. The result was OurThreeThirty.

The concept is simple: take a photo everyday at 3:30pm regardless of where you are or what you’re doing. The object is to find beauty whether your surroundings are monotonous or magical. Then submit what you’ve captured into an open pool of other 3:30′s. The resulting collection with celebrate the differences (and similarities) in the way we experience time, space, light and life.

We want you to join us in this project. To view our 3:30′s and submit your own head to ourthreethirty.tumblr.com.

This weekend was crazy productive. CRUSHING IT! All tees now have custom labels (hand stamped by yours truly) and we screen printed a whole new line of packaging that we’ll be mailing out starting this week. Glossy black ink on a sturdy kraft mailer. Pretty classy if you ask me but it’d probably best not to take my word for it. Head over to the shop and grab this month’s tee on product design and you’ll get to see one of these beauties in person.

BBC brilliance.

You will rarely meet a more talented duo than husband and wife team Rob and Lisa Walcott. This December we were lucky to have them join us for our after school workshops. Although their professional and personal work spans a wide variety of mediums (photography, drawing, painting, installation) a strong reverence for the temporal unites it all.

On the first Thursday in December they joined us for a photo-walk and studio tour. Rob opened with a video excerpt from a BBC program (shown below) exploring the four words the Himba (a tribe in Africa) use to describe color. The whole program is fascinating and the accompanying website is worth a read too. Back to the Himba – because of the words their tribe uses to classify color they are often unable to observe differences in certain colors you and I (assuming we grew up with ROYGBIV) can easily recognize. In playing a more elaborate version of “which one of these things doesn’t belong” the anthropologist shows the theory in action.

From here a simple yet profound metaphor emerges: if language shapes what we see, then a camera gives us access to a new kind of language; one that we are constantly submersed in by but rarely notice (or have the words to explain). From mouthes to eyes and back to mouthes again.

After the video we took to the streets like a horde of photojournalists. During our walk Rob, an experienced guide, pointed out often overlooked characteristics of light. Shadows were tinted a cool blue while areas bathed in sun were warm. Rim and fill light brought the two in close contact. Surrounding colors tinted skin tones one way or another. The whole tour made the everyday act of seeing quite magical…which, when you actually think about the act of seeing (a lens focuses lightwaves onto rods & cones that convert said waves into electrical signals that your brain interprets as color) makes it even more so.

Eventually we worked our way to their studio where he used a student model as an example to show how the size of a light source effected the shadow. Larger lights cast a softer shadow while smaller sources cast hard lined shadows.

Praxis. This word contains all that I love about our workshops; it’s the perfect blend of theoretical knowledge and hands on experience. I can’t thank Rob and Lisa enough for giving us a glimpse into their profession and the language they use everyday. Rob is a excellent teacher and it came through in the workshop. Afterwards several students expressed gratitude for how simply he explained the basic concepts of photography. It was quite brilliant to watch and I found myself equally (if not more so) enthralled. Thank you so much, Rob, for exposing us to a language of light that makes our life richer.

Be sure to check out the photography of Rob & Lisa at Walcott Imaging.

Microsoft. Burton. Lupe Fiasco. Reebok. Chicago Marathon. Target. Under Armour. Kaskade. Vans. Mountain Dew. The list goes on.

But it didn’t start there.

Taking full advantage of an extensive high school art program he was ready when community connections opened doors to start designing flyers for clubs he wasn’t old enough to get in to. He continued to gather steam and started NoPattern when he was just 17. Eventually the time came to graduate high school he chose (with his parent’s blessing) to forgo college to pursue the profession full time.

This past month we were lucky to have Chuck join us for a frank conversation on hard work, color, and experimentation. For this particular workshop the things said in Room 220 are best kept private but we’ll boil down a few of the main things we learned during our time together:

• Network — get your name out there! — send lots and lots of e-mails to magazines, publications, blogs, companies whose work you like, and whose work yours would work well with.
• Get Involved — the world is a web and the the more connected you are the easier you are to find.
• Be bold.
• Persistence pays off.
• Be kind of annoying, but not that annoying

This Month’s Artist Tee