Virginia Postrel, contributing editor at The Atlantic and author of The Substance of Style as well as The Future and its Enemies will be speaking at Stanford University at 8PM on April 12, 2007 in Building 420-41. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Mechanical Engineering Design Group and the David H. Liu Foundation. More information about the lecture series can be found here.

Thesis Club is a DAI graduate student group for MAIA candidates helping each other help themselves get through the creative work process. Students have started meeting every 2-3 weeks on Thursday evenings in the graduate studio, pending participants’ availability. While the group meetings serve as an open forum, our goal is to focus the agenda to ensure benefit and productivity all around. For more information about the next meeting time, contact Mary Lee McLaughlin mlee.designs@gmail.com .

FITS is beginning work on a sustainable materials library and is looking for DAI students to participate. Needed roles include product designers, graphic designers, project managers and others. Earn credit for DAI 576 or DAI 852. To learn more, come to the kickoff meeting scheduled for Thursday Feb 1st at 12:00 noon in the Graduate Studio (behind Room 151) or email us if you are unable to attend: info@furnitureinstitute.org

The Design and Industry 50th Anniversary Celebration as well as 50 years of innovation in DAI was the focus of a feature article on Saturday January 6th, 2007 in the San Francisco Examiner. Take a look at the article by downloading a PDF of the complete article here.

The Furniture Institute of Technology and Sustainability (FITS) is an organization committed to the creation and exploration of mutually beneficial opportunities for students and faculty in design services, design research, renewable/sustainable materials research, socially responsible processes and practice with the contract, home and custom furniture industries.

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS

DAI Alumni Portfolio Night
Wednesday November 8th, 6:00 – 9:00pm
Jack Adams Hall, Chavez Student Center, SFSU

Design Symposium: Emerging Design & the Future Society
Thursday, November 9th 7:00 – 9:00 PM
(Reception at 6:30pm)
Jack Adams Hall, Chavez Student Center, SFSU

Winter 2007 Design and Industry CEL Course Offerings

DAI 300 Design Process
Sec: J01
Sched.# 17019
09:00-12:00 & 1:00–5:00 M-TH
FA 151 Gomes, R.

The Department of Design and Industry is holding a Logo Design Contest - Submissions are Due by November 17th at 5PM and should be turned into the DAI Office / Logo Design Competition c/o Sandra Kelch. Complete details about the competition are outlined on the submission form, which you can download as a PDF.

Six years ago, at the height of the Internet boom, Eric Ryan’s friends laughed at him as he turned down one dot-com job offer after another to start a company in the stodgy, low-tech business of household cleaning products.

Today, many of those dot-coms are long gone.

And Ryan’s company,San Francisco’s Method Products, was recently named the seventh fastest-growing private company in America by Inc. magazine.