And the winner is …

What began as an offer for one industrial student to receive a one-year, paid internship at VTech turned into one student being offered a job following graduation, and two others being offered six-month, paid internships!

VTech’s senior design manager David Waterman announced Jesse Bizzoco and Austin Brown as the recipients of the two VTech internships, and offered Ishmael Adams a position on the VTech design team.

Ishmael and Jesse celebrate the VTech news!

Austin’s all smiles after learning he’ll be back in Hong Kong this fall.

Bizocco and Brown, both juniors, tentatively head back to Hong Kong this fall to begin their six-month internships. Adams, who graduates May 31, may start his two-year contract with VTech on American soil while his Hong Kong visa and living arrangements get set up overseas.

Professor Peter Fossick embraces Ishmael, Austin and Jesse after learning the exciting news.

Unexpected hiatus

You know you’re not in Savannah anymore — or even Hong Kong, for that matter — when suddenly your Internet access is strangely limited to certain sites and the blog you’re responsible for updating daily unfortunately doesn’t make the cut.

Such is the tale of what happened after we arrived to Shenzhen, China May 19. All set up in the five-star room at the Goodview Hotel, I excitedly logged on to wireless Internet without having to pay for access like I did at the YMCA in Hong Kong. What I did not expect was the “Big Brother”-esque moderating of Internet traffic.

During our three and a half day stay in Shenzhen I continued to document our journeys, and journeys they were. From crazy bus drivers to some of the factories responsible for our everyday consumer products, we took Shenzhen by storm.

Now officially back in the United States, and literally sitting on the ground in the Newark Airport, I am finally able to start posting our travels from the last few days. Thanks for your patience, thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of the blog!

~Emily

Gold Peak Electronics factory in Guangdong

After a morning with TTi’s Leon Yoong and a traditional Chinese lunch at an area hotel, the SCAD industrial design crew headed to Gold Peak’s factory facility for a tour. Built with the company’s high-end brands such as KEF and Celestian in mind, the immaculate factory is filled with natural light.

Looking out from the inside of the Gold Peak atrium in Guangdong.

Taking a look at the scaled-down model of Gold Peak’s factory and staff apartments.

Jesse and Julie show off their dust-proof shoe covers in Gold Peak’s sound quality room.

South China Morning Post interviews Jesse and Marcus

By Emily Green

On Thursday, following the VTech presentations, industrial design students Marcus Perez Cervantes and Jesse Bizocco met up with reporter Miranda Yeung from the South China Morning Post–Young Post for an interview about being [American] design students, visiting Hong Kong and working with VTech.

The interview began with Marcus and Jesse’s photo shoot along the Kowloon harbor, behind the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, while Yeung spoke to industrial design professors Peter Fossick and Joel Wittkamp.

SCMP Young Post is a biweekly edition of the SCMP geared toward young adults. We will post the run date and link when the article is set to run.

Until then, here are some snapshots of Marcus and Jesse’s SCMP photo shoot. Way to represent SCAD, guys!

International networking at the InnoCentre

First, a recap. In the last three days, we’ve met with some of the top-level design management at companies such as Gold Peak, Techtronic Industries, Hasbro and VTech. Each has taken time to talk with the industrial design students, answer their questions and have a good laugh every now and again.

Of all the companies we’ve visited so far, each has expressed genuine interest in keeping in contact with the students. Business cards have been flying from hand to hand, along with offers to review portfolios and perhaps even additional internship opportunities. *NO word yet on the students chosen for the VTech spots.

The incredible networking opportunities just keep coming. Today, we spent an entire workday at the InnoCentre. The InnoCentre is a building that houses “incubation” chambers (or rooms if you’re not English!) where new designers are starting their careers. Reminiscent of shopSCAD is a bookstore within the InnoCentre where products designed by “incubatees” are sold.

A nonprofit group, Hong Kong Design Centre, provides some of the spaces to the new designers in order to further nurture the design skills of more recent graduates. Some more established designers — take Kan and Lau Design Consultants, for example — have offices in the building as well.

Here’s a list of the folks we met with today:
Annita Mau, corporate communications, Hong Kong Design Centre
Stanley Chan, project manager, Hong Kong Design Centre
Gigi Ng, client services and marketing manager, SensesGROUP
Leo P.H. Chan, practicing artist and creative director, On Your Mark
Catherine Lui, art director, Fish – shoppers based design
Kent Wong, product development director, Sunhing

The big day: VTech

The big day finally arrived. A little nervous, yes. Excited? Of course.

Eight weeks into spring quarter and just two days shy of having spent a full week in Hong Kong, the industrial design students — Jesse, Marcus, Jacob, Ryan C., Julie, Matt, Will, Pat, Drew, Ryan, Ish, Bradley, Dan, Austin and Carl — presented their final design concepts to VTech designers David Waterman and Joshua Fischer. And, safe to say, they blew away their captive audience.

David remarked that the work of the collective group is the best he’s seen of any student work from any college in the world. The adjectives “impressive” and “professional” repeatedly preceded comments on the students’ presentation skills, process sketches, research and concept ideas.

The group made SCAD history as the college’s first-ever student group to travel internationally and present to a real world client. As professors Peter Fossick and Joel Wittkamp said later in the afternoon, while being interviewed along with Marcus and Jesse by the South China Morning Post (Young Post), it is the first of [hopefully] many future class experiences like Hong Kong.

During an evening reception for some of our company hosts at Felix’s, David Waterman explained to a reporter from Hinge Magazine the necessity for design students to experience a class project such as the SCAD and VTech.

You guys ROCKED!!! Thank you for this amazing trip… HON

Hasbro toy studio visit

Possibly the most entertaining visit we will make — getting to play with toys at Hasbro with our host, Kenny Ho. He and his group are in charge of designing new toys and updating some classics such as GI Joe, My Little Pony, Super Soaker and Nerf toys

Peter striking a GQ pose before we left for Hasbro.

Hasbro’s Kenny Ho tells us about what it’s like designing toys. For everyone who imagines this job would be a total blast, you’re absolutely right!

Matt, Marcus, Jesse, Ishmael and Julie can’t help themselves around an entire table full of toys. A collective favorite? The latest and greatest Super Soakers, which Kenny was pleasantly surprised to discover appealed to the college-age market.

Joel gets technical with a Hasbro designer about the Nerf gun, while Jacob and Carl observe.

They gave US a gift, and all we did was show up!

Parting shot from a highly entertaining morning with our new friends at Hasbro.

Random pix 3

Lantau 2

Just a cable car behind on the trek up to the top of Lantau, where Buddha (or at least a giant statue of him) awaits visitors.

Marcus, Carl, Ryan and Pat from within a cable car.

Joining the tradition of burning incense on Buddha’s birthday.

Bradley is becoming a big fan of soy milk!

Getting around Hong Kong

How do you transport 15 industrial design students, two professors, a photographer and a writer? Easy to do in Hong Kong thanks to the MTR (subway), red and white taxis, the Star Ferry … and our feet.

Our first MTR encounter, riding from the airport to our hotel.

Riding the Star Ferry across the harbor to Hong Kong Island

Walking to a desired destination.

What way is it again?