
Department Blog
Department news, events, and snapshots of student life at SVA in New York City.
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ENGENDER from MFA Products of Design is Live at NYCxDesign!
As part of NYCxDesign, the students of the MFA in Products of Design at the School of Visual Arts present Engender, a roving and interactive exhibition that explores the role of design in the construction of gender identities. The exhibition’s eight interventions deconstruct simple artifacts and gestures of our gendered world and invite visitors to play along in a performative game of gender mash up and reconstruction.

Spinute: A Laundromat App "By the Minute"
Spinute is a mobile app that saves time and money in the laundry process. Designed by Adem Onalan, Tahnee Pantig and Louise-Anne van ‘t Riet. Spinute is specifically for users of laundromats. Some of it’s features include a live schedule, on demand booking and namely, a washer to dryer service.

"Bud": A Smart Preganancy Companion that Tells You and Your Baby Where You're At
"Bud" is a smart pregnancy companion that acts as a support system for pregnant women. Designed by Vidhi Goel and Eliz Ayaydin, the device emerged from the design brief of "Reimagining home monitoring" in the Product, Brand & Experience course of the MFA Products of Design Program. The project celebrates pregnancy for parent and child—a precious time that deserves care and attention, and a product category not yet addressed in the from a technology standpoint that is user-centric and humanistic.

#SLIDEFREE: Michael Bierut Delivers His First-Ever "No-Slides" Lecture at MFA Products of Design
Last month, Michael Bierut, partner at Pentagram and one of the most captivating design thinkers and speakers in the world, delivered his "first-ever talk without slides" at the MFA Products of Design Department. In a lecture that is candid and humble, incredibly personal, reflective, and inspiring, Michael examines his "first 10 years and his next 10 years"—sharing his history and dreams from childhood to present day, looking toward the future, and punctuating the talk with side trips to humble ambitions and lessons learned.

Social Solitude: From Product to Platform In a Nutshell, by Eden Lew
Students were asked to "redesign the next thing they threw out," and in seven weeks Eden Lew took a discarded sandwich wrapper on a journey through prototyping and branding, ending with Nutshell—a pod-inspired platform for productive break-taking.

I Don't Vote: Design & Politics Workshop in Washington Square Park
The graduate students from SVA’s MFA Products of Design program wanted to find out why young people don’t vote by creating a campaign and design intervention called “I Don’t Vote”—addressing apathy and framing the discussion around both the predicted and unseen reasons for opting out. The campaign was grounded in an I Don’t Vote Manifesto, and in an online website and mobile webapp, an in-person booth, sticker, and button campaign.

Masters Thesis: COEXIST: Mixing With Urban Wildlife, by Rona Binay
Turkish designer Rona Binay’s MFA Products of Design thesis entitled, ‘COEXIST, Mixing with Urban Wildlife’ studies the relationship between city and nature through the lens of urban wildlife. A seeming contradiction, Rona’s embrace of urban/natural was triggered when she discovered footage of a coyote playing with a bottle on a frozen pond in Central Park. (Another fascinating example of urban wildlife is the peregrine falcon, which nests on high-rise buildings and bridges within the city.) Rona acknowledges that cities not only serve as living landscapes for humans, but also provision as habitats for many different species.