Students from the Senior Brand Campaign course, taught by Professor and Chair Susan LaPorte and Professor Chad Reichert, have won international accolades through the Creative Conscience (CC) Competition #WhyVoteUSA.
The students were asked to create a call to action to engage first time voters to lift their voices in the 2024 Presidential Election. Through creative social media content, Creative-Conscience strived to show young people that their voices matter and encourage them to educate themselves about democracy.
Seven Communication Design & Strategy students received the following awards:
About Creative Conscience Creative Conscience is a creative community and global not-for-profit organization who believe that creative thinking and innovation can make positive change. The mission is to embed purpose-driven creative thinking into every institution, brand and organization across the world.
Continuing its expansive work serving communities in Detroit and beyond, the CCS Practicing Design Center supports nonprofit organizations through partnerships offering design solutions from CCS faculty and students
The College for Creative Studies (CCS) is pleased to announce the launch of its Practicing Design Center, partnering nonprofit and community organizations with CCS students and faculty to tackle community challenges using the transformative power of art and design.
“At CCS, our focus on experiential learning and working within our community is of the utmost importance,” said Don Tuski, President, College for Creative Studies. “The Practicing Design Center brings these two initiatives together by pairing the innovative art, design and strategy work students are doing with non-profits and community organizations that offer exciting and challenging opportunities. This expands CCS’ impact in the community.”
CCS has worked with over 200 organizations through its existing Educational Partnerships program between 2017 and 2024. However, the current partnership model poses financial and capacity barriers for nonprofits and small businesses to participate. Thanks to support from Ford Philanthropy, Gilbert Family Foundation, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, and Detroit Public Library Foundation, CCS has been able to work with nonprofit organizations like C.L.A.S.S. Agency, COTS Detroit, Forgotten Harvest, InsideOut Literary Arts, Life Remodeled, and others.
Learning from those experiences, CCS is organizing its social impact work with students and faculty via the new Practicing Design Center. The center will offer three benefits:
A streamlined process for nonprofits and small businesses to collaborate with CCS students and faculty through classroom projects, design sprints and internship opportunities.
Accessible way for funders and civic leaders to connect their interests to the creative and problem-solving skillsets offered by CCS faculty and students.
Enhanced interdisciplinary opportunities for students to develop comprehensive skill sets through real-world experiences working with nonprofit and entrepreneurial partners.
With support from Ford Philanthropy, the Practicing Design Center is launching its first call for interest for Winter 2025 projects starting on Thursday, September 26, 2024. Interested organizations can complete a brief application form on the College’s Practicing Design Center website. Submitted proposals will be reviewed by a CCS committee and selected based on their alignment with the following criteria: experiential learning and educational value, project impact, project feasibility and scope, partner capacity for support and collaboration, and alignment with College’s mission and principles. Recent examples of CCS’s prior social impact work include the following partnerships:
C.L.A.S.S Agency: In the Winter 2024 semester, Undergraduate Interior Design and Graduate-level Color & Materials Design students worked together to develop a comprehensive design for a vacant building that C.L.A.S.S. wants to repurpose for a safe house and resilience hub for youth and young adults. The students created visual assets to help the organization demonstrate a vision for its future.
Life Remodeled and Durfee Innovation Center: In the fall 2020 semester, Communication Design students created brand identity strategies that could function across multiple media platforms in order to meet Life Remodeled’s diverse communication needs and to support the multifaceted nature of the Durfee Innovation Center’s role in Detroit’s west-side neighborhood. Through the Practicing Design Center, CCS will place two students this fall at Life Remodeled to help strengthen their brand as they expand into new programming.
“Since our founding in 2010, Life Remodeled’s neighborhood revitalization work has evolved significantly over our first decade. However, a number of branding challenges remained, and we were unable to afford professional assistance,” said Chris Lambert, CEO of Life Remodeled, a CCS nonprofit partner. “Our partnership with CCS Communication Design students was not only a fun process for our team, but the final outcomes were just what we needed.”
“I am ecstatic about the possibilities uncovered by the youth. I am also proud to know that CCS is a gem in the city that anchors an incredible amount of creative genius,” said Dr. Karla Mitchell, Executive Director of C.L.A.S.S. “What the students were able to envision and reimagine after connecting to our mission gives our staff and youth great hope for the kind of community this project will create. The passion and connection to the work that C.L.A.S.S. does was evident at every encounter, every design review and we loved it.”
PRACTICING DESIGN CENTER LAUNCH EVENT
Practicing Design Center launched officially on September 26, 2024 with a pop-up exhibition as part of Detroit Month of Design, The C.L.A.S.S. Project: Transformative Connection with Space and Matter, at the Gensler Detroit office. The exhibition featured design work from CCS students, including Undergraduate Interior Design and Graduate Studies in Color & Materials Design. Students collaborated with C.L.A.S.S. Agency on a project aimed at enhancing systems, environments, and lifestyles of stakeholders through restoration, revitalization, and renewal.
Ilana Portney has been immersed in the world of set building since her childhood.
Fueled by her parents’ creativity during the 2008 recession, her journey began with crafting Popsicle stick structures and decorating dollhouses. Over the years, she evolved into a talented set designer, working on music videos, TV and film productions. Her impressive portfolio includes collaborations with artists including Ice Spice and Quavo, as well as with the likes of iconic companies like Nike, Vogue and Maybelline.
On a recent trip back to Detroit, Portney invited us to the Russell Industrial Center to discuss her latest project – designing a Complex magazine cover set for Detroit’s own Eminem.
The Interview
“When it comes to networking or getting a job, you do not have to do things in a practical way, because this world is not practical, and things don’t happen practically anywhere. All of my jobs came from Instagram, literally, and that’s how I grew my career. I didn’t start out as a production assistant. I started out as a production designer. I started out at the top of my career field.” –Ilana Portney
What led you to this career path? In my junior year of college, I met a director of photography who showed me the way of the Art department. We started making our own films and music videos. I took up a minor in Film my junior year and became obsessed with making videos and skits. The second I graduated I landed my first big project with the TODAY Show through NBC.
Once I did that, I wanted to do it forever.
I moved to New York and, after networking through Instagram, my first project was a Fetty Wap music video. From there, I met people my age and we all grew together and became really close friends. I met my now mentor, Robert Taylor, on a Charlie Puth music video, and I work with him all the time now. He’s like a brother to me.
What does a day in your life look like? It depends on the project.
I care about my work so much that it really feeds into my life. I wake up around 6 or 7 a.m. on a project week. I think about all of the things that I have to do, maybe make a deck to present. Start sourcing all the props I need, talk to the producers about the budget, and fight them on it. Have tea if I can. Go shopping for the things that we need, and source more things. Talk to the photographer, the director and the director of photography. Talk to my team, if we need to build. Talk to the fabricators, a.k.a. Robert. I go to bed about 2 or 3 a.m., wake up and do it again.
I do it because I love it. This is my life. I love art, I love the people that I meet, and I’m fascinated by how people think. It’s really hard for me to sleep because I love the things I do.
What do you love most about your career? I’m honored to be doing something that I love. I’m honored to be working with my friends, and I’m amazed that I get to work with them all the time and get paid to draw smiley faces on note cards and stick them in the background of a bedroom set. I get to do something fun every single day. It’s stressful to have to source three and a half yards of sand, but it’s like, that’s my job. Every day, it’s just an honor.
What would you say to current students or potential students who might be interested in this career? No one masters everything. And I’m still learning that, you know.
As an artist, you’re your own worst critic. You have to better yourself, whether that’s working out, drawing, painting, therapy or something. You’ll continue to fall, but you can learn a lot from other artists and your friends and lean on those people.
There are so many incredible people who I grew with at CCS who have taught me so many valuable things, not just talent-wise, but socially as well. They brought perspectives that I wouldn’t have, from how they were raised and their stories. That helped inform my work.
What, or who, inspires you? I love other people. Everyone around me is so talented. All of my friends, every single person at CCS. One of my closest friends, Dillan Murillo, is exceptionally talented. He was one of the hardest-working students at CCS, and I really admired his work ethic. Everyone at CCS was so talented in their own ways, you know, so other artists inspired me to have much more drive.
Over the course of the Winter semester, the College for Creative Studies hosted 13 sponsored projects and competitions across a variety of disciplines. Students from Communication Design and Fashion Design to Graduate Color and Materials Design and Product Design were able to partner with local and global brands to work on a specific project tailored to meet the needs of our industry partners.
Sponsored projects are highly conceptual and allow CCS students the opportunity to participate in creative, research-based assignments within real-world design parameters, interacting with designers and staff from the partnering company. The students worked on the following projects during the Winter semester.
C.L.A.S.S. x Interior Design & Color and Materials Design
Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear x Illustration
Ford Philanthropy x User Experience Design & Color and Materials Design
General Dynamics Land Systems x Transportation Design
General Motors x Transportation Design & User Experience Design
Hagopian Rug Competition x All Departments
John Deere x Transportation Design
Midea x Product Design & User Experience Design
Movement Music Festival (Paxahau) x Communication Design & Advertising Design
Nickelodeon x Entertainment Arts & Illustration
Stride x Entertainment Arts & User Experience Design
Tapestry x Fashion Design & Color and Materials Design
Visionalist Entertainment (Detroit: The City of Chefs) x Entertainment Arts
These educational partnerships were part of a CCS initiative focusing on experiential learning. Highlighting this approach, Matt Chung, Associate Director of Strategic Partnerships and Programs, states: “Each semester, our partners engage our students with creative challenges that extend their practice beyond the classroom. Through experiential learning, where ‘learning by doing’ is key, students bring classroom knowledge into real-world contexts. These partnerships not only sharpen our students’ skills but also fuel growth and innovation in our partner organizations.”
Communication Design students worked in teams to develop full-scale co-brand concepts for the John D. Dingell Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center. Through the co-branding process, the local internal brand had to align with the core values and visuals of the Federal Branding for Veterans Affairs.
A contingent of three departments from the College for Creative Studies participated in the prestigious Salone del Mobile Milano 2024.
The Salone del Mobile Milano is widely recognized as the preeminent global design fair. This year was a standout year with over 360,000 visitors, 1,950 exhibitors from 35 countries and over 5,500 accredited journalists in attendance. Participating departments were undergraduate Interior Design, undergraduate Communication Design and graduate Color & Materials Design.
“Being able to take a team of students to showcase their student work at Milan Design Week was an opportunity for us to shine a light on their exceptional work, our community and Detroit.” – Melanie McClintock, Chair of Color & Materials Design
“Having my work shown in Milan Design Week felt so unreal, but I also felt so proud of my team. We all worked extremely hard, for many long hours, days and weeks to make sure our project was perfect.” – Yostina Kaoud ’24, Color & Materials Design
In what was once home to the historic Carminati Toselli factory for tram and railway rolling stock, the Fabbrica del Vapore showcased undergraduate CCS Communication Design student work during the INTERDEPENDENCE international exhibition. As part of the larger Milan Design Week, INTERDEPENDENCE reflected relationships connecting projects of Politecnico di Milano https://www.polimi.it/ students with those of 50 international design schools. Four of these projects were from CCS Communication Design students: Luke Fabricatore, Rebecca Hernandez, Yasmin Ali, Madi Ritemburg and Lucy VanEerde. Their projects explored concepts in reframing immigrants through an immigrant lens, a first generation social advocate experience and empowering Native people to reclaim their history.
Also participating in Salone del Mobile, undergraduate Interior Design and graduate Color & Materials Design students were one of only six international design schools asked to participate in the six-day UNFOLD exhibition hosted by Domus Academy https://www.domusacademy.com/ . UNFOLD showcased design prototypes addressing crucial global challenges through design as a problem-solving discipline and as a form of communication. CCS students Yostina Kaoud (MFA Color & Materials Design), An Luu (BFA Interior Design), Yuya Cheng (MFA Color & Materials Design) and Yasmeen Khalifa (BFA Interior Design) were in attendance and presented their work from a Winter sponsored project with the local Detroit non-profit Changing Lives and Staying Sober https://www.class-agency.org/ (the C.L.A.S.S. Agency). C.L.A.S.S. asked students to create an environment that promotes a safe space, holistic healing and transformation for a newly acquired residential property that will serve as a safe haven for prevention, intervention and substance use disorder treatment for both adults and children.
“It was an honor to bring both CCS and C.L.A.S.S. Agency to an international viewpoint. So thankful to showcase our group’s work and passion — it was overwhelming in the best way possible. It provided a space with new ideas and new horizons where I was able to talk and learn with fellow students and schools from all over the globe.” – Yasmeen Khalifa ’25, Interior Design
CCS Student Work at Milan Design Week
“CCS has been working for years to involve students in Milan Design Week. The opportunity to be the only U.S. college invited to participate in the Domus Academy exhibit was exceptional and one I will not forget.” – Sandra Olave, Chair of Interior Design
Create an experience digital or analog that moves users into physical spaces that forge new connections.
Boolean is a speculative human centered social advocate product that recognizes the people you brush past in a day in your life. Given the consequences of social distancing and digital socialization, this product is designed to bring Gen Z back in physical contact with on another in a subtle but meaning way. Its not a dating app, a friend app, its not an app at all, its a small device to help you navigate real human interaction on your own terms.
This experience is designed to empower Native people to reclaim their history. Through a series of workshop experiences, Indigenous people would annotate and write over Westernized, Euro-centric textbooks with their histories and perspectives allowing for the reclamation of identity.
“Our goal is to share our current insights, from the creative process, without assuming authority on behalf of the Indigenous community. To to honor the lives and narratives of Indigenous people. All presented artwork and research strives to embody ethical, respectful, and authentic practices. The projects showcased serve as proof-of-concept, recognizing that further development necessitates collaborative content creation and sourcing with the Indigenous community, autonomously facilitated by trained experts.”
“I’m American Too”, uses the negative associations of immigrants in America in order to flip this narrative as a positive, humanistic and more accurate way. The challenge was to move beyond stereotypes in order to celebrate America’s rich history of created by immigrants.
The rise of branding in America has contributed to an identity crisis, highlighting the nation’s imperfect history and its complex role as a perceived leader on the global stage. While our country has always been flawed, it was once seen as a beacon of ideals to emulate. Consequently, we constructed a brand around this image, whether rooted in reality or myth, which now shapes individual perceptions and relationships with our national identity.
