CCA alumni shape the future of sustainable design

Nick Cronan (BFA Industrial Design 2002) first came to CCA in 1999 as a laborer hired to frame walls and jackhammer holes in the Greyhound bus repair facility that was to become the heart of CCA in San Francisco. He had been encouraged to get some real-world building experience before entering CCA’s architecture program in the fall, but he quickly shifted his focus to industrial design where, according to his recollections, they “seemed to have more fun and listened to better music.” In industrial design, Cronan was exposed to sustainable mindsets and practices from legendary faculty Jay Baldwin in his Energetics and Ecology course, a foundation for industrial design students at the time. Cronan recalls Baldwin’s “serene wisdom and expertise in ecology, biomimicry, natural systems and natural capitalism,” all of which made a deep impact on the young designer.

Recently, Cronan stepped away from Branch to devote his time and talent to what he considers a challenge greater than any single product, to “work with nature, not against it” by advising organizations that align with his new focus: regenerative agriculture. He is taking his problem solving skills and technical knowledge from a successful career in industrial design to champion sustainable agriculture which he believes is the “key to addressing climate change.” Jay Baldwin would surely be proud.

Remy Labesque (BFA Industrial Design 2007) grew up in rural Northern California with a deep respect for nature woven through his family life where gardening, beekeeping, and woodworking were ways to connect with and support the land. It is fitting then, that his first industrial design studio project at CCA was to design a conceptual fruit taking into account how “biology could inform the shape, size, and scale of living things,” according to the assignment brief. Labesque’s response was a florescent green loopy form that was surprisingly biological and artificial at the same time. The project confirmed that industrial design would be a good fit for this aspiring designer who wanted to invent the future while bringing nature along as a primary stakeholder.

Many of the projects that Labesque has been involved in since graduating were team efforts without individual recognition, several significant enough to be awarded patents. His name is listed on a wide range of inventions—appliances, medical devices, solar units, and modular housing—all serious contributions to classic industrial design categories. But perhaps the one innovation that has garnered the most individual media attention is his chocolate chip redesign for San Francisco–based Dandelion Chocolate. After taking a chocolate making class, he identified functional flaws in existing chips that kept them from melting perfectly. His faceted flattened chocolate chip solves that problem in an elegant way and reminds us that industrial designers can be both serious and playful at the same time.

As a sophomore at CCA, Rosalie Wild (BFA Industrial Design 2012) did not know that she would eventually become the design director at Heath Ceramics, but she had already identified the historic Bay Area company as one of her inspirations. In a 2010 visual manifesto for her Design & Culture course, she included Heath Ceramics along with Korean artist Do Ho Suh, Dutch designer Tord Boontje, and her aunt, graphic designer Lorraine Wild as role models for her developing creative practice. Also on that manifesto? A series of statements about design that reveal an aspiring designer in charge of her future and the language to express her goals and intentions.

An excerpt from Wild’s 2010 Design & Culture visual manifesto:

“DESIGN:
Should not need a final product.
Benefits from cyclical exploration.
Enables simple, humble solutions for all.
Shapes (intangible) meaning out of (tangible) material.”

Angela Sevilla (BFA Industrial Design 2017) thought she wanted to go to culinary school until the moment she poured molten aluminum into a mold at a college recruiting event in her hometown of Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. That sparked an interest in other materials— ceramics, glass, jewelry—which she first studied in community college, then later at CCA. Industrial Design seemed the perfect major to merge her passion for food with her love of making things. In a junior industrial design studio, she and her classmates designed ecologically and culturally sensitive products using sustainable mindsets and methods, though at the time she recalls that it was difficult to fully understand what sustainability meant in real world terms.

Sevilla’s first job was with Fitbit as a CMF (Color/Material/Finish) designer, an emerging field at the time. There she realized that every design decision had an environmental cost and that sometimes the most sustainable option was to test silicone colors at the factory rather than ship samples across the ocean multiple times. Since then, Sevilla has seen many improvements in materials—vegan leather, seaweed plastics, water-free dyeing processes—but admits that many decisions still come down to cost. In her current role as a color and materials designer at Nike, she uses sustainable practices every day—gauging material durability, component separation, and especially weight—factors that impact the sustainability rating of every pair of sneakers delivered.

Before joining Nike, Sevilla had taken a three-month sabbatical to focus on ceramics and get back into wheel throwing, but that sabbatical was extended when her interviews with Nike stalled at the outset of the pandemic. She and partner Dustin Le (BFA Industrial Design 2017) turned their Portland garage into a pottery studio and Los Objects was born. Three hundred sixty-six cups later (one for each day of 2020, a leap year) they had enough for an exhibition, each cup a poignant record of Sevilla’s energy and emotion throughout the pandemic year. Today the vessels and cups she makes for Los Objects are satisfying and tangible reminders of the materiality that first drew her to industrial design.