Partnerships + Collaborations

  • RISD + NASA

    RISD + NASA

     

    For more than 15 years, RISD and NASA have been working together through the NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium. The partnership has led to a wide range of advanced studios in which Industrial Design students look at various aspects of design for extreme environments. Creating innovative solutions for living and working in zero-gravity and other almost unimaginable conditions is the ultimate design challenge—one that truly forces students to let go of their assumptions and allow their imaginations to soar. At the same time, NASA scientists and engineers provide a helpful, down-to-earth “reality check” to keep proposed projects within the realm of what’s currently feasible and affordable.

  • RISD + HASBRO

    RISD + HASBRO

    As two of Rhode Island’s internationally recognized creative leaders, RISD and Hasbro are natural allies. For decades, RISD alumni have found a good fit for their talents and expertise at the toy giant and often note that Hasbro’s creative teams and approach to product development have a lot in common with RISD’s process-driven studios. Over the years, Hasbro and RISD have teamed up for targeted research projects and partnered studios that introduce students to the challenges and rewards of toy and game design and provide the company with a fountain of fresh and innovative ideas.

  • RISD + OBLONG INDUSTRIES

    RISD + OBLONG INDUSTRIES

    When Oblong Industries approached RISD about beta-testing g-speak, several departments embraced the idea of working with this innovative spatial operating environment [SOE], which enables users to operate computers through simple movements and gestures rather than keyboards and mice. Oblong generously donated and installed the experimental SOE at RISD as a means of putting it in the hands of exceptionally creative and open‐minded thinkers. “We’re as concerned with design and humanist principles as with programming,” notes John Underkoffler, Oblong’s cofounder and chief scientist. “We came to RISD because these young thinkers aren’t hampered by old 20th‐century ways of thinking, and will come up with forms, systems and designs beyond what Oblong alone can imagine.”

     

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The men in this 1903 portrait class were serious about the business at hand.