RIT’s School of Design announced Wednesday that office
furniture and supply firm Poppin is the industry partner that participating students
will collaborate with for this year’s Metaproject. The
class of 22 senior ID students gathered in University Gallery for the reveal, buzzing
nervously and making guesses at what type of product they would be asked to
create.
Now in its sixth year, Metaproject is
an elective design studio course offered to seniors in RIT’s Industrial Design
program, which sees students work in collaboration with a different industry partner
each year. The students are asked to design a product that solves a specific problem
or works within a set of parameters, and work toward this goal throughout the
semester.
The course offers the students a taste of real-world
experience, connections with design professionals, and the possibility of
having their design put into production.
This year, the design topic is “Work Happy,” which is also Poppin’s slogan. The students are tasked with designing “innovative
accessories for Poppin’s furniture that accent, improve,
or add to their use,” says professor Josh Owen, who
developed Metaproject and leads the course.
Suggested areas of exploration include — but are not limited
to — storage, organization, desktop real estate, cable management, power
accessibility, comfort, privacy, and sound isolation.
While designing, students must take into account certain
trends in modern offices that present challenges. These include shrinking or
shared work spaces as companies grow in number of workers but not square
footage, the need for privacy (for meetings or phone calls) in open-plan
offices, and the increasing popularity of standing at elevated desks rather
than sitting.
The materials, technologies, and processes that students will
use to create their finished products are part of the plan they’ll have to
come up with, Owen says, and they will have to match the manufacturer’s
abilities and goals.
In addition to the industry partner and project reveal, the
students watched a presentation by Poppin professionals
that introduced them to the company’s philosophy and aesthetics.
Poppin creates simple, elegant, and
elemental products that “eschew unnecessary details,” says Jeff Miller, Poppin’s VP of product design. The company is also known
for offering nearly every product, from stapler to filing cabinet, in every hue
from its bright, cheerful color palette.
Students then got a hands-on look at select Poppin products that will remain on hand throughout the
semester for reference. These include the company’s Series A
Double Desks formed into a long conference table, Max Task office chairs, and Limber
LED Task Lamps.
Past Metaprojects had students partner
with Wilsonart, The Corning Museum of Glass, Areaware, Herman Miller, and last year, with both Kikkerland and Bed Bath & Beyond.
Through Metaproject, students make
contacts in some of the most prestigious design-based companies in the world, and
have the opportunity to exhibit their products each May during Design Week in New York City.
Metaproject is an interdisciplinary
assignment — as part of this project, Industrial Design students will team up
with professor Adam Smith’s New Media Design students to develop an experience
around the ID projects that will be part of the product showcase in New York
City.
Past students have designed products some companies
have taken into production. For example: James Paulius’s 2013
design for Metaproject 03 (in collaboration with world-renowned
avant-garde accessories manufacturer, Areaware). Paulius’s “Blockitecture“
subsequently went into mass production, and is available at the MoMA gift shop.
He has since created a second iteration, Blockitecture
Garden City.
“James’ career has really been kickstarted
by this Metaproject,” Owen says.
About 14 weeks remain in the semester, and students will work
on projects for about 12 of those weeks. The last couple of weeks will be spent
on judging the products to determine which ideas will be polished up and
brought to New York City.
“Winning design concepts will be chosen for their ingenuity,
usefulness, aesthetic refinement, and coherence within the rest of Poppin’s product assortment.” Owen says.
The kick-off of Metaproject 06
follows on the tails of the third annual T-minus, a one-week project challenge
the ID department undertook last week. Learn more about T-minus here.
The students will
continue work on Metaproject 06 through the end of
the semester. City will follow up on this story and their projects a bit down
the line. Watch RIT’s video about the Metaproject 06
reveal here.
To learn more about Metaproject, visit metaproject.rit.edu.
This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2016.
