Last school year, industrial design school students of Academy of Art University were given 98 days to fulfill a design challenge by Subaru . Now it’s time to see if the brief had been successfully met.

The challenge: reimagine the Subaru car for 2030. It’s simple enough—2030 isn’t too far away after all–and yet, it requires creative, innovative thinking. It also requires collaborative input from others outside of the Academy’s car design program.

For this, the School of Industrial Design students, under the tutelage of Director Antonio Borja, teamed up with students from at least six other departments. The collaborating schools included Interior Architecture & Design, Advertising, and Graphic Design, to name a few.

Collaboration is Creative Chaos

“The idea and the goal is to get students real-world studio experience working with multi-disciplinary teams to achieve a common goal,” explained Borja.

This component of multi-disciplinary collaboration is essentially what makes this Corporate Partnership class different from the others being offered at the Academy. With dozens of students from different course backgrounds in one class, it’s fairly easy to imagine how it can result into creative “chaos.” This is exactly what happened on Day 1, instructor Scott Kress recalled.

There is method in madness as they say, though, and eventually, these ideas became solid concepts. Students were grouped together according to how well they gelled, and this group is the one they worked with for the rest of the project.

That’s Day 1 of 98 down. Tune in for Part 2 of this Subaru x School of Industrial Design video series, and be inspired by the creativity of our young Academy student designers at work.

The School of Industrial Design is just one among several others from Academy of Art University that features a Corporate Sponsorship program to let students gain firsthand experience in working with real-world brands as clients.

Request information from our admissions representatives for more details if you want to earn an industrial design degree. Apply now if you’re ready to get started on making your passion for art and design into a professional career.