Summer months for two design students: Erika and Grace
Parents, friends, employers, and even professors often wonder what our undergraduate design students get into during the summer months. Curious? Read on!
In this news story, two industrial design students – Erika Strazinsky and Grace Gerber – offer details about and reflections on their Summer, 2022. Among their summer activities, Erika and Grace collaborated with Assistant Professor William Nickley as part of an ongoing effort to produce an open-access educational resource called 3D Media for Creatives, currently accessible as a YouTube playlist, and coming soon as an online “book”.
Hi my name is Erika Strazinsky and I am a 4th-year student in Industrial Design at Ohio State. This summer, I split my time between two internships; one where I was a Summer Research Assistant and the other where I worked alongside the designer at a local furniture business called Created Hardwood.
While at Created Hardwood, I 3D modeled custom furniture designs, created marketing content, edited multimedia projects, and learned the ins and outs of how a business is run.
As for my internship as a Summer Research Assistant, I worked under Assistant Professor William Nickley and alongside fellow Industrial Design student Grace Gerber to create an open access 3D media library for creatives. The goal of this 3D media library was to rethink educational 3D modeling content in order to better suit the needs of creatives (artists, designers, makers, etc.). Because most 3D modeling content out there is engineering based, our project addressed a gap in the current media landscape where designers like Will, Grace, and I could come in and develop new and relevant content for a different demographic.
As the Media Specialist on the team, I edited video content, wrote the scripts, sketched storyboards, and analyzed existing 3D media content. While we were able to create a handful of videos in our living library, the most energizing part of this internship was imagining where this project could go. This internship opened my eyes to inspiring ways that creative people can use 3D modeling and how we can utilize new technology to communicate these ideas in captivating ways. The end of this summer felt like the beginning of something much bigger and I am grateful to have gotten the ball rolling alongside fellow designers.
Hi, my name is Grace Gerber. I will be a Third-Year Industrial Design student as of Autumn Semester, 2022. At the beginning of Summer 2022, I was hired by my professor, William Nickley, to be a Summer Research Assistant, specifically a 3D Modeling Specialist. As I love 3D modeling and have experience with tutoring and teaching, I was ecstatic to be given the opportunity and get started!
Initially, I thought my role would be creating 3D models and taking screen recordings of me doing so, but it turned out to be so much more. I got to be a part of things like gathering information on pre-existing 3D modeling content, surveying classmates, and working alongside my professor and my co-worker, Erika, to plan what we envisioned for the Media Library.
On top of that, content-wise, I not only got to use Fusion360, but I also got to use Gravity Sketch (a virtual reality 3D drawing/modeling software) to further demonstrate a unique perspective on 3D modeling. Using Gravity Sketch, by far, was one of my favorite parts of the content creation because I was able to use some of my previous experience and passion and was able to learn new tools and features in the software.
Overall, this experience was amazing not only because of the growth in my skills but also because it gave me a chance to work with two talented designers to publish a powerful start to the open-access resource 3D Media for Creatives.
