Graphic design student Michael McDonald hands out blocks in the new graphic design creative space
Thursday evening the Oregon State University Graphic Design program showed off its new offices and collaboration space with an open house, inviting the OSU community to see the new area it hopes will facilitate more great work from students.
Located in the ground floor of Milam Hall, the new area houses offices for graphic design faculty, a front lounge area and an open meeting room for students.
The meeting area doesn’t have tables and chairs but moveable, stackable blocks that can be rearranged in any format a project requires. Eventually the space will also have whiteboards and flatpanel screens.
“They can bring their laptops, plug into the screens,” said associate professor Andrea Marks. “It’s a place they can kind of call their own, where they don’t have to have teachers around.”
Michael McDonald, a junior in graphic design, was already breaking the space in Thursday evening, handing out blocks to students as they entered.
“It’s a place we can all gather and use as a think tank and for projects with all these resources,” McDonald said.
Leslie Burns, associate dean of the School of Design and Human Environment, was the speaker at the latest Oregon State Business Roundtable series event Wednesday at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland.
Burns discussed how design and business can better align, drawing on her experience not only as an educator but as a consultant to design and apparel companies.
A leading teacher and researcher in the field of apparel design, Burns has been a cornerstone of SDHE’s growth and was essential to it becoming the School of Design and Human Environment and its integration into the College of Business.
In addition to her academic work, she’s worked as a consultant in the apparel industry and is also working with scholars from Korea and Taiwan, exploring cross-national consumer behavior.
The Business Roundtable Series is part of a collaboration between the College of Business and OSU Alumni Association, with the goal of providing networking and service opportunities for alumni within the Portland-area business community.
The next Roundtable event is OSU President Ed Ray’s update on the university Jan. 31 at The Hilton Portland & Executive Tower.
The past two years School of Design and Human Environment instructor Keith Nishida has tried to use his DHE 299 summer class to push the boundaries a bit on what students expect from a summer class.
This year that meant his Fashion Styling class — eight students meeting four days a week for three weeks — produced a 40-page fashion magazine titled “DAM Chic,” traveling from Corvallis to Portland to speak with OSU alumni working in the apparel industry.
“They went above and beyond expectations,” Nishida said of his students. “I think they took it upon themselves to polish and put their own personal stamp on it.”
Participating in the class were students Walter Blice, Olivia Echols, Ariana Giesbrecht, Erin Hatley, Katie Keister, Chandra Magnuson, Melisa Magnuson and Bailey Phillpott.
The class started as Nishida’s attempt to show students there is more to fashion styling than just the celebrity styling most people are familiar with.
“A lot of people know celebrity styling exists but they don’t know anything beyond that,” he said. “The point of this course was to introduce students to the fact that styling isn’t exclusive to celebrity styling.”
From there, Nishida hoped to show how students could combine that creativity and commerce through the form of commercial styling in a fashion magazine.
The magazine gave students an opportunity to experiment and build different skill sets related to SDHE disciplines – such as fashion writing, photography, design, marketing and promotion- all into one comprehensive project.
Students model and shoot photosStudents model and shoot photos
Students wrote, photographed and even served as models for the inaugural issue, with many shots done in and around Oregon State and Corvallis. Students also did interviews with alumni Kathleen McNally of Columbia Sportswear and Jillian Rabe, an alumna who operates her own production haus in the Pearl District.
The final product is now available online at facebook.com/damchicmagazine. Launched on Sept. 6, the final day of the course, the Facebook page received more than 100 likes in its first 24 hours, Nishida said.
So far there has been interest from students to make DAM Chic a club and continue publishing in the future, though nothing is yet in place. No matter where the process goes from here, Nishida said he was impressed by the commitment the class showed to the project.
“I’m so proud of my students, they put so much love into it,” he said. “If this is to have another issue, I’d like to see more local businesses, local boutiques and non-fashion business in Corvallis [get involved with the magazine]. It’d be a testament to how important OSU is for the Corvallis community, and Corvallis to OSU.”
