Highlights from 2024-25

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70 years of design education

The Design School celebrated 70 years of design education at ASU.  Established in 1954, the school has grown into the most comprehensive design institution in the nation. To commemorate this milestone, the school hosted a series of events that highlighted its rich legacy, showcased the latest achievements and focused on future endeavors, with presentations such as ‘How Design Can Help Build the Future of Health’ and ‘How Design Can Reshape Our Relationship With Our Planet and Advance Technology For Good.’

Don Norman Design Award

The Industrial Design program was honored with the Don Norman Design Award for its innovative, human-centered approach to education and sustainability. The award recognizes the program for its commitment to shaping the next generation of industrial designers.

Winning designs 

Graphic design students in The Design School had their work broadcast nationally after dominating the annual PSAid contest, a nationwide public service announcement design competition for college students. For the competition students create PSAs explaining why cash is the best way to donate to international disaster relief efforts, and in 2024, ASU students won the top three positions in all categories, including the people’s choice award. Their designs will be featured in CIDI’s “Cash is Best” campaign, which in previous years has reached over 1 billion people. 

Interactive museum exhibits for kids

Design students and engineering students collaborated to create interactive museum exhibits for kids as part of The Design School’s STEAMtank class. The class is a two-semester, interdisciplinary class open to all students and provides opportunities to design and build museum exhibits to teach young children about STEAM — science, technology, engineering, art and math. The program is part of The Design School’s InnovationSpace, a center that brings together students to tackle real-world challenges — not just as classroom exercises, but through hands-on engagement with industry, community groups and researchers.

Public work for real change

The Design School alum Zack Aders—an accomplished architect and recipient of the AIA New York Public Architect Award—shared how a childhood love of building clubhouses in Indiana grew into a public service career managing over $1 billion in infrastructure projects for New York City.

Cross-sector collaboration 

Johanna Taylor, associate professor in The Design School, received one of the ASU’s Humanities Institute Spring 2025 grants for her work on “Creative Civics: Artists, Artmaking, and Cross-sector Collaboration.” The project collects the experiences in developing civic art projects from artists and core collaborators with the goal of defining the objectives of the artists and their civic counterparts and identifying the impact factors that their projects generate.

Don Norman Design Award photo courtesy of The Design School. 
Winning designs image courtesy of EL Mikkelsen. 
Interactive museum exhibits for kids photo by Erika Gronek. 
Public work for real change photo by Sam Lahoz.
Cross-sector collaboration photo courtesy of Johanna Taylor.

 

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