With the 2010-2011 school year at a close, I thought it seemed fitting to take a moment to step back and reflect on this year in terms of RISD-ID.ORG, a blog started by Isaac Blankensmith and me earlier this year.
When I opened the first Industrial Design department meeting in the Fall as the department representative, one of the biggest issues I felt that existed in the department was the disconnect between faculty, students, and alumni. While our faculty is the strongest attribute of our department, holding a vast range of real world experience working in the field of industrial design that they can bring back into the classroom, students weren’t making this connection and overall had a lack of awareness of the achievements members of the faculty were accomplishing in the field. Post-graduation, students seemed to disappear from the RISD community, and rarely returned to the campus as alumni. While the RISD Industrial Design alumni includes working professionals from Jonas Damon and Asher Dunn to Michael DiTullo and Cutter Hutton, students were not aware of this strong network of alumni that existed beyond RISD’s campus and, without that knowledge, had no way to tap that network for the wealth of knowledge it has to offer.
After holding this meeting, fellow student Isaac Blankensmith approached me and agreed completely with the issues I had brought up. We both agreed that RISD’s Industrial Design Department lacked the digital presence it should have as one of the premier design schools in the world, and such a presence would improve a lot of the disconnects we felt existed in the department. Together, we decided to launch a blog where we would showcase the work of faculty, students, and alumni, as well as share news and resources of things going on inside and outside the department.
Isaac set up the blog using WordPress.org, as well as worked with administration to secure a domain name and hosting for the site. From there, we both scoured inside and outside the department for RISD ID stories and news. We amassed a small team of writers that became a great support staff as we met once a week to share news and disseminate tasks to complete each week. Around January, we finally had faculty and alumni coming to us with stories, and students submitting all by themselves! We now receive around a hundred hits a day, with our biggest day reaching 967 unique hits. This summer Isaac and I plan to keep posting as we meet people in our respective internship locations (Seattle and New York City), so stay tuned.
Next year, we hope to expand the team, take on more writers, in a hope to increase the news and resources about RISD’s Industrial Design Department that we are sharing with the local and global community. Thank you everyone who helped to make this year a success!
Carly Ayres + Isaac Blankensmith
Special thanks to Maureen Buttenheim, Adam Smith, Wesley Chau, Kegan Tawney, Ari Kohorn, and Rene Lee.
Posted by Carly Ayres | Date Posted: 24 June, 2011