THE VISION

SUMMIT is a 9 day intensive programme geared towards positively enriching students into a world perspective through design. This programme offers college-level design students the opportunity to embark on an international academic journey each summer to a wide variety of countries. SUMMIT focuses on one country each year and immerses itself into that culture's design history, current visual vocabulary, and researches design firms that are producing positive work.

The aim of SUMMIT is to expose young American Designers to an entirely new perspective on design — not only through experiencing how design firms in other countries approach projects & design problems, but through the entire experience of travel. Travel allows the mind to expand beyond the norm and inspire an individual. Interaction with another culture's currency, language, public spaces, architecture, geography and transit opens one's mind to a newness that is powerful. Every culture approaches visual communication uniquely different and its this difference we can all learn from.

This first year we will be traveling to The Netherlands. We chose Holland specifically because of the rich history of Dutch design and culture is one we feel to be of great importance to young aspiring designers in America.

The end of this international journey is literally the beginning for each participating student. Taking all that we've learned from this experience, SUMMIT initiates a proposition: find a problem in your own world (local or global), determine a design solution for it, and execute that solution. Each solution will be included in a traveling 30-day show.

We see this as a great opportunity to allow American design students an opportunity to use their skills for the greater good, and to expand their understanding of visual communication. It will also show to a much wider audience how design can effect change, and how this audience themselves can be agents in this process.