Department Blog
Department news, events, and snapshots of student life at SVA in New York City.
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Consulting for Creative Businesses with Emily Cohen and Hunter Vargas - Full Video
Emily Cohen and Hunter Vargas, the mother-daughter team behind Casa Davka, joined us to discuss their work guiding creative firms in refining, evolving, and elevating their strategies and practices.
Explorations in AR & Synthetic Ecologies: Yasaman Sheri’s Design Journey - Full Video
Creative Director, Interface Designer, and Researcher Yasaman Sheri discusses how she’s leveraging emerging technologies to investigate synthetic biology, aesthetics of simulation, objects, and perception systems.
From Pica to Pixels: Tala Safié’s Design Journey - Full Video
New York Times graphics and multimedia editor Tala Safié discusses her transition from print to digital, her penchant for playful experimentation, and the power that good design can wield.
Guest Lecture Video: Souvik Paul
Souvik Paul is an award-winning industrial designer / design strategist who is the founder and CEO of Aurie, a medical device seed-stage start-up focused on reducing intermittent catheter-associated urinary tract infections.
Guest Lecture Video: Cliff Kuang
Cliff is a user-experience designer at Google and author of ‘User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play’ which was called a “tour de force” by the New York Times and was also named an Amazon Best Book of 2019. Previously, he was head of UX and product at Fast Company; the founder of Fast Company’s design site, Co.Design; and an editor at Wired. Under his leadership, Co.Design became an award-winning source of insight and inspiration for a generation of designers.
Guest Lecture Video: Cameron Tonkinwise
To kick off our Spring Lecture series for 2023, Products of Design was delighted to welcome Cameron Tonkinwise, who gives an annual lecture to our students and guests. This year's lecture is entitled "All Care, No Responsibility: Everything Service Designers Need to Know About Politics But Were Afraid to Ask."
Guest Lecture Video: Chloé Cooper Jones
Chloé Cooper Jones is a writer based in New York City. In 2020, Chloé was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Feature Writing for “Fearing for His Life,” a profile of Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the killing of Eric Garner. She was the recipient of the 2020 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and the 2021 Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University. Both grants supported her latest book, Easy Beauty, a memoir which finds the author—after unexpectedly becoming a mother—embarking on a journey across the globe to reclaim the spaces, both physical and emotional, that she’d been denied and denied herself.
Guest Lecture Video: Amy Whitaker
On September 22, 2022, MFA Products of Design was pleased to host a guest lecture by writer, educator, and advocate Sara Hendren. Amy Whitaker was a founding member of the faculty in SVA's MFA in Products of Design where she taught Business Structures. She is currently an Associate Professor at New York University in the Steinhardt School’s department of art and art professions. She teaches business to artists, art to businesspeople, and economics to arts managers. She started her career in art museums including the Guggenheim, MoMA, and Tate.
Announcing the Fall 2022 Lecture Series
We are delighted to announce our Visiting Lecture Series lineup for the Fall 2022 season. (See all of our department guest lecturers here.) Read more below about Amy Whitaker, Cliff Kuang, Marquise Stillwell, and Cloé Cooper Joes below!