Astro Studios recently mentored a group of students at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco for the Fall 2009 semester. Lending his 20+ years in the design consultancy field, Kyle Swen, VP at Astro, had a lot to offer the students looking for credits in the course entitled Product Design IV taught by Jim Shook.

The goal of Astro sponsoring this class was to bring real-world expertise and process to the classroom. Kyle tasked the students with a project that required them to design a timepiece for a brand of their choosing. Kyle proposed the timepiece theme due to its natural blend of technology, style, and fashion. Believing that he could push the students even further, Kyle had them design the out-of-box experiences for the products as well. Kyle wanted the students to fully understand the brands and clients they were designing for, and pushed the students to define the demographic groups that the brand was trying to reach. For their finals, the students showed their presentations here at the studio, pitching their ideas to the Astro crew for critical review.

The class thrived on the invaluable “in the trenches" point-of-view from Kyle, and in return Kyle gleaned fresh zeal from the students. "It's always inspiring to see young enthusiastic talent excited about design. As working designers it re-sparks our creative engines as well”, stated Kyle.

It was truly a pleasure working with the Academy of Art University and their students. We look forward to expanded mentoring and educational collaboration in the future.