Discoveries #32 | Building a New Design School From Scratch
Welcome to Edition 32 of Discoveries where I share inspiration on design, product building, and what's next.
Building a New Design School From Scratch
Something I care deeply about is making sure San Francisco continues to have a strong design school.
CCA closing next year after nearly 120 years is incredibly sad.
But there’s also a pretty amazing opportunity hiding inside of it: how often do you get the chance to build a world-class design school essentially from scratch, in SF, right as technology is completely redefining what it means to be a designer?
Almost never.
I went to CCA as an architecture student and later came back to teach there for nearly a decade. That gave me a unique window into what the school did exceptionally well, where it struggled, and what I’d do differently if given the chance to start from a blank sheet of paper.
So, naturally, I have some thoughts. :)
If I were helping build a design school for the next 100 years, here’s where I’d start:
1. Do fewer things exceptionally well.
I wouldn’t launch with 25 majors.
I’d start with a small number of core programs where enrollment could explode (and there's clear market demand for graduates of these programs).
- Interaction Design
- Industrial Design
- Architecture + Interior Design
- Graphic / Communication Design
- Design MBA
Then I’d build bridges between all of them.
The interesting problems ahead don’t fit neatly into academic departments anyway. The person designing a robot might need to understand industrial design, interaction design, mechanical engineering, AI, and business strategy.
Organize the school around that reality.
2. Teach designers how business actually works.
This was one of the biggest gaps I saw both as a student and later as a teacher.
Design students learn how to make things. They learn surprisingly little about how the organizations paying them to make those things actually work.
Every student should graduate understanding the basics of:
- How companies make money
- Unit economics
- Intellectual property
- Negotiation
- Accounting and financial literacy
- Leadership and management
- How to sell an idea
Not because every designer should start a company.
Because the best designers I’ve worked with understand that design doesn’t exist in a vacuum. They understand customers, technology, organizations and economics.
And some will start companies.
Designer Fund is a great example of designers becoming investors. Zypsy combines design with venture investing and product building. Airbnb showed what happens when designers become founders.
Designers should leave school believing the CEO seat, not just the design seat, is available to them.
There’s also a slightly uncomfortable lesson here: CCA ultimately couldn’t make its own economic model work.
Perhaps the next great design school should teach business fundamentals as seriously as it teaches design.
3. Create a Center for AI + Design.
This one feels non-negotiable.
Every design discipline is about to be transformed by AI.
But I don’t think that means designers become less important. I think the opposite might happen.
AI dramatically lowers the cost of making. A designer who once needed three engineers and six months to turn an idea into software can increasingly build it themselves over a weekend.
Ideas that were previously too expensive, technical or ridiculous to prototype suddenly aren’t. We’re entering a period of creative abundance.
The important design skills become problem solving, taste, judgment, storytelling, systems thinking, curiosity and knowing what is worth making in the first place.
I’d establish a Center for AI + Design and partner directly with the companies building the technology around it: OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Airbnb, and the hundreds of startups being created around them.
Have their researchers, founders, engineers and designers teach studios.
Give students access to emerging models and tools.
Run joint research programs. Create industry residencies.
Let students spend a semester exploring AI as a new design material, rather than simply another piece of software they need to learn.
San Francisco is the center of the AI revolution. A design school located here should take advantage of that fact almost shamelessly.
4. Make professional experience mandatory.
Every student should work professionally for at least six months before graduating.
One of the most valuable things I did while studying architecture was work at the same time.
Suddenly the abstract things we discussed in school had consequences. Budgets existed. Deadlines existed. Clients changed their minds. Things had to actually get built.
Turns out “the engineer says that’s impossible” is a pretty useful design constraint.
I’d borrow heavily from schools like Northeastern and University of Cincinnati and make co-ops part of the curriculum rather than an extracurricular activity available to the most motivated students.
And because this is San Francisco, those placements shouldn’t just be at design firms.
Send students to architecture studios, startups, robotics companies, venture firms, AI labs, manufacturers, city government, and research labs.
A student’s education should constantly oscillate between school / world, school / world.
5. Build the world’s best prototyping lab.
CCA was already doing a lot right here.
Its fabrication facilities gave students access to CNC machines, 3D printers, wood and metal shops, and digital fabrication.
I’d push even further.
Build a massive interdisciplinary prototyping center combining: robotics + CNC + additive manufacturing + textiles + composites + ceramics + woodworking + computational fabrication.
Basically: give creative people dangerous amounts of capability.
Software is becoming extraordinarily cheap to build. Meanwhile, enormous amounts of capital are flowing into robotics, manufacturing, defense, energy, aerospace, climate technology and other industries that require people who understand atoms as well as pixels.
The next generation of designers shouldn’t just know Figma.
They should know how to solder something, machine something, program something, prototype something and occasionally break something expensive.
Every student should graduate having built real things that actually work.
6. Build the school’s financial model like a startup.
CCA’s closure should be a warning to every independent design school in America.
Tuition cannot be the entire business model.
Vanderbilt already has an enormous advantage here because it brings the resources of a major research university. It already raised $100 million to help fund their new design school.
That’s a great start.
But San Francisco may be about to experience one of the largest wealth-creation cycles in its history.
AI companies are growing at unprecedented rates. Founders, employees and investors will create enormous amounts of new wealth.
Some of those people will care deeply about design, education, art and San Francisco.
Go get them.
Build a world-class fundraising organization. Create endowed faculty positions. Fund scholarships. Build research institutes with industry. Create sponsored studios. Establish fellowships.
Build an endowment capable of supporting the institution through whatever economic cycle comes next.
And then make the impact incredibly visible.
Show donors the companies students started.
Show them the products they invented.
Show them the buildings they designed.
Show them the research they produced.
Show them the jobs they created.
Create a flywheel between academia to industry to wealth creation to philanthropy back to academia.
That’s how you build something designed to last another 120 years.
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I could list another dozen of these:
- Bring more working practitioners onto the faculty.
- Make entrepreneurship a legitimate graduation path.
- Create a student venture fund.
- Let engineering students take design studios and design students take engineering classes.
- Bring back serious craft.
- Create public exhibitions all over San Francisco.
- Make the campus a destination for people to visit, get inspiration, and attend events.
But I’ll save those for Part II before this turns into my unsolicited application to become dean :)
CCA disappearing is genuinely sad.
But Vanderbilt has been handed something incredibly rare: an existing design campus in SF, the legacy of a 120-year-old institution, significant financial backing, and the opportunity to rethink design education during one of the biggest technological shifts of our lifetime.
My simple recommendation: don’t try to rebuild the design school of the last century. Build the one we’re going to need for the next one.
What I'm Reading
🔗 Behind Instagrams first major refresh in 10 years
Instagram just did its first major brand refresh in a decade, but the most interesting part is how little it wants people to notice.
Turns out the ultimate rebrand flex is not screaming “WE REBRANDED.”
Product Inspiration
NASA Force is a program designed to pull in strong engineering and design talent into projects for short tours of 1-2 years. Basically, a stint at NASA without having to sign up for a lifetime in government.
Have a great week!
Blake
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