Addy Kessler's The Art of Product Design
Addy Kessler has developed a project based course at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon that explores form and function, and interaction with design in our everyday lives.
Observing the world around them, students in Kessler’s Advanced Art of Product Design class are tasked to solve problems with new design. Utilizing hands-on design challenges, students identify consumer needs, investigate design flaws, refine their ideas, and investigate material use. Students study the business of design and explore manufacturing, production costs, and retail pricing.
While always looking for new teaching tools and ways to evolve the curriculum, Kessler invited College Representative Stephen McDowell to share FIDM’s curriculum supporting presentation, Designing “Inside” the Box: Exploring the Innovative Field of Visual Communications, as preparation for finding a solution to a challenge that they wanted to solve with design. They wanted to increase awareness of the Art of Product Design courses and boost course enrollment, at a time when students were planning their course selections for the next academic year.
How should they do this? Applying FIDM’s expertise in the business of design, McDowell led the students through a variety of career-focused interactive design and marketing exercises. Students explored designing within a space, visual presentation, and how to best construct a window display. They realized that they needed to grab the attention of the viewers, their fellow Lincoln High School students. Tasked with solving this challenge with design, the students analyzed and studied a variety of window displays, brainstormed and completed drawing exercises to plan the execution of their design. Over the course of four hours, the students worked as a team to collect materials and to carefully construct the window display, highlighting student work in leathercraft, woodworking, sewing, textiles, garment design, and casting.
The window display created the buzz that Kessler had hoped. The Art of Product Design course enrollment has doubled for the upcoming academic year. She has received countless emails and compliments from colleagues and community members.
Since designing the window display, students have been sharing examples of window displays in their community, using the examples as a teaching tool to analyze and discuss best practices and techniques. They also followed this project with a field trip to downtown Portland to further analyze and discuss window display composition and visual communications.
“I have noticed that my students are much more engaged in what the retail experience means . . . and [they] better understand the range of career opportunities in the fashion world, because of this project,” Kessler said. With this window display students were also able to complete one of their Career Related Learning Experiences, a graduation requirement at Lincoln High School. She is very excited about utilizing the display case going forward to not only highlight student work, but as a creative teaching tool.
Thankful for the opportunity to continue to evolve the Art of Product Design curriculum and for the support of her community and high school, Kessler said, “[O]ur students really benefit from getting to see firsthand how the work they are doing in their art classes can apply to their future careers.” Through visual communications, Kessler’s students shared the impact and influence that design can have on all of our lives.
