Industrial Design

Industrial design is a constantly changing discipline in which each student’s talents are channeled toward creative and constructive solutions to real-world problems. From a telescoping, interactive talking cane for the blind to a gardening system for urban school children to a collapsible roadside emergency light for motorists in a jam, CCA Industrial Design students are called upon to find the best possible solutions to a wide variety of challenges.

About the Industrial Design Program

The CCA Industrial Design Program encourages students to engage in a variety of forms, materials, systems, media, environments, and use scenarios for their projects. Because of the varied and complex nature of the field of industrial design, students explore many different aspects of a given project at one time—historic precedents, current events, forecasting, experiential research, materials investigation, form development, engagement with fabricators, prototype testing and iteration, 2D, 3D, and 4D presentation methods, among others—that will help them respond in a comprehensive, integrated and anticipatory way to all manner of design opportunities.

About the Industrial Design Program

Through internships, sponsored studios, visiting lecturers, and guest critics, students gain knowledge and experience while making the industry connections they will need to move beyond CCA into the larger design community and professional world.

PURSUING MANY OPTIONS WITHIN THE FIELD

Students have opportunities to work with an enormous range of product types and technologies from toys and recreation to furniture and domestic goods to education and social causes to digital technologies and devices to future-oriented and conceptual projects. The best designers are those who understand design problems from a user’s perspective and throughout the Industrial Design Program, students are encouraged to develop their own areas of interest and connect their studio projects to their personal passions.

MERGING SOLID SKILLS WITH EXPANSIVE THINKING

The CCA Industrial Design Program runs on two parallel tracks: The first is a skills-based series of studio courses designed to introduce technical competencies that include sketching, rendering, model making, visual stylization, and digital capabilities. The second track deploys these skills in a series of project-based studios that build upon one another, taking on progressively more complex, challenging, and conceptual projects as they advance.

With instruction in research methods, problem-solving techniques, and design-build solutions, students develop skill sets that not only help them in their studio work, but also encourage ongoing growth and lifelong learning. Their final studio sequence is the Senior Project, an intensive year-long effort in which students integrate their individual skills and knowledge into a fully researched, prototyped, and tested design solution that will become the key component of their design portfolio.

CONNECTING ACROSS DISCIPLINES

Industrial Design students regularly engage with students from art, craft, humanities and other design disciplines through their nonmajor studios and seminars, giving each student a wide variety of interdisciplinary experiences throughout their education.

BAY AREA INNOVATION & CREATIVITY

CCA’s Industrial Design Program is situated in the San Francisco Bay Area at the intersection of art and commerce, high style and DIY, global awareness, and local engagement. No place in the world has seen more growth in the wide-ranging fields of high technology, electronics, computers, software, social media, sustainability, environmental awareness, social responsibility, sports and recreation, biotech, health and medical sectors, venture capital, and entrepreneurship—all areas that provide a wide range of opportunities for the motivated student.

Not surprisingly, many of the world’s most influential design consultancies, Fortune 500 companies, and a host of smaller globally recognized design firms are headquartered in the Bay Area. CCA Industrial Design faculty members come from many of these companies, including Astro Studios, Frog Design, fuseproject, IDEO, Intel, and LUNAR among others. As a result, students have many opportunities for extended contact with leading industrial designers who are uniquely positioned to introduce them to the broader design community.