⏰ Do Now — Start Here
If you were hiring a 3-person design team, what 3 roles would you want on it, and why?
🎯 Today's Big Question
- How does a real design studio operate, and how will our classroom studio be organized?
📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To
- Identify typical design studio roles: project/creative manager, designer, production lead.
- Explain how our classroom studio will be organized (rotating roles, or fixed roles per job).
- Preview the resources available to the studio: large-format printers, photo printers, 3D printers, and cameras.
🧰 What You'll Need
- Notebook/journal
- A real studio's "about" page or portfolio site (teacher-provided example)
📋 Your Plan for Today
- Mini-lesson: how a real design studio is organized and how ours will run this semester (15 min).
- Resource tour: walk through the studio's actual equipment -- large-format printer, photo printer, 3D printer, cameras -- and what each is good for (15 min).
- Discussion + sign-up: students identify which role(s) they're most drawn to for the semester ahead (15 min).
📚 Key Words
- Design Studio / Agency
- A team of designers who take on client work as their business.
- Creative/Project Manager
- The role that keeps a job on schedule and communicates with the client.
- Production Lead
- The role responsible for actually printing, 3D printing, or exporting the final deliverable.
✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include
Informal check: every student can name the studio's available production resources and at least one role they want to try.
Exit Ticket: Which studio role are you most excited to take on first, and why?
📊 Before You Leave
Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.
🔗 Want to Learn More?
- No extra links for this lesson.
🚀 The Extra Mile
Cross-Class Connection: A direct Business/Entrepreneurship class topic — how a real service business is structured and run.
Career Connection: This lesson previews exactly how Advertising & Marketing agencies and freelance studios actually operate.
Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:
- Research one real local or well-known design agency and present how it's structured, as a real career-research artifact. Start here: pick one agency whose work you already like, and start with their "About" page, not their portfolio.
- Design a mock "studio brand" (name, logo, one-line pitch) for your own classroom studio this semester. Start here: write your one-line pitch in words first, before opening Illustrator to design a logo around it.