Hardly Square Teaches MICA’s Flex Studio
This spring semester Devin and I were honored to teach Maryland Institute College of Art’s (MICA) Flex Studio class. We were very proud to have the opportunity to give back to the student population and help foster environments of creativity. Our main objective was two fold:
1. give our students as close to a real world experience as possible
2. genuinely listen to their unique take on the subject
MICA is one of the top art colleges in the United States. We knew going in that our students were already getting world class art direction from their professors. So, we felt the best opportunity for them was to offer a window into the professional world.
Rubbermaid Commercial Products (RCP) was kind enough to team up with us to provide our students with a real world project. We have been working with RCP for the past 5 years and have a strong working relationship. This created the perfect fit. The MICA students would get the opportunity to work on a real world project with a real client, RCP would get some of the most creative/young minds to take a fresh look at their marketing, and Hardly Square would get to give back to Baltimore’s creative community and put a finger on the pulse of today’s youth.
And seriously, who knows what the meaning of where the web is heading more than today’s youth? These creatives grew up in the digital era. They instinctually know what the internet is evolving into. They’re leading us there.
Actually… Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, put it best in this video where he’s quoted as saying “This is the smartest generation ever… we need to listen to young people, embrace their culture, adopt their tools, and change our organizations. And if we do that we will have better performance and better innovation.”
This is exactly what RCP and Hardly Square did within our MICA Flex Studio Class. We listened to and learned from some of America’s top creative students. And our students were excited as well because at the end of the program they knew they would get to see their efforts reflected in a marketing communications initiative with a global reach. RCP was thrilled too:
“It was very exciting to have Hardly Square enlist the brightest young minds in design to rethink what our Rubbermaid Element microsite could be, and we have reaped the benefits with the creation of a world-class microsite. It is just another example of Hardly Square going the extra mile for their client, and to me, that makes all of the difference in the world.” ~ Max Rudy, Digital Marketing Manager of Rubbermaid Commercial Product
The Project
RCP was launching their new product line The Element, decorative indoor recycling stations. They wanted Hardly Square and the MICA students to come up with a Flash Microsite solution that:
- maintained brand standards
- engaged and enticed their target audience to learn more
- implemented a user friendly interface / navigation
- showcased the features and benefits of the product
- provided specification sheets, sales brochures, sustainability tools, and other RCP recycling solutions
- pushed conversions and harvested sales leads
The Class
The first class we discussed the project in-depth and shared Hardly Square’s internal processes, strategies and philosophies. We laid the ground work, setting a framework that fosters conceptual thinking and sound marketing research. It is absolutely essential to start your projects with a clear understanding of the client’s business objectives. We wanted the students to gain experience in a project with some strict brand standards. We realized that a lot of the art projects they had experience with had extensive freedoms. This isn’t the case in the professional world a lot of the time. At the end of class the students were instructed to do marketing research for homework, bringing in examples of engaging and interactive experiences on the web that they were attracted to.
The second class the students brought in what they thought was digitally engaging. We discussed what successful techniques were working with the examples the students brought in. We instructed the students to leverage what they learned and to also come up with innovative ideas to successfully market RCP’s product line. They identified the interactive techniques they wanted to implement and we did one-on-one sessions teaching them how to implement these techniques within Adobe Flash.
After a few weeks of class critiques and one-on-ones, the students were ready to present their solutions to RCP. Max Rudy, the Digital Marketing Manager at RCP, drove up to listen to the students’ presentations. Max gave the students valuable feedback as to what RCP and most corporate clients will be looking for. This gave the students valuable experience presenting to a Fortune 500 company marketing manager. The students greatly benefited from one-on-one learning sessions that allowed for learn-by-doing techniques and real world learning situations which promote longterm remembering.
The Final Product
All the time teaching the MICA class and discussing marketing and design strategies with the students really helped Hardly Square “add an edge” to the marketing solution. The students brought great insight to the table and the class structure lead us to think in directions we might not have taken normally. We spent a considerable amount of time focusing on the user experience, call-to-action opportunities, ease of navigation, new technologies, and engaging animation techniques that would promote nonlinear exploration.
Experience the entire Rubbermaid Commercial Products microsite.
I would like to extend a special thanks to Rubbermaid Commercial Products, The Maryland Institute College of Art, Max Rudy, and all the students in our class. Working with everyone was a remarkable experience!
MICA Students:
Bri Antonaccio
Charde Fuller
Nicole Chen
Stephen Edmond
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