Designed to launch: how Calvin students prepare for creative careers
On a Friday afternoon in early September, Chris Fox is painting the side of a building just outside downtown Grand Rapids. He’s preparing a mural for ArtPrize—an annual international art competition that takes place just a few miles from Calvin’s campus. Working with him on the project are some of his current and former students.
“I ask students to participate in these kinds of things because I want them to launch, and I want to help them as long as I can,” said Fox.
Fox is a professor at Calvin University and the chief architect of the university’s rebuilt graphic design program that has become a powerhouse in the region. For the past three years, the Fox-led program has won more than half of the American Advertising Award Federation’s (AAF) West Michigan ADDY Awards, which are judged by industry professionals from ad agencies across the country. This past spring, Calvin University students also took home more than one third of all AAF district awards (which includes colleges and universities from Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana) and three of the five judge’s choice awards.
Creating a community of creatives
“We’ve got an advantage,” said Fox, who admits that it’s not the curriculum that’s being taught at Calvin that sets it apart from its competition. Fox should know as he has experience teaching at almost every other design program in West Michigan. He says what makes Calvin stand out stems from the community that’s been created within the program, which is unlike anywhere else he’s been.
“Calvin has allowed for this collaborative, familial community inside the program to be established, maintained, and nurtured,” said Fox.
Fox has intentionally designed the educational experience to help students thrive as designers and to become close friends in the process. He says a key aspect is fostering an environment of honest critique. And that begins on day one.
Critiquing and collaborating
“We set up opportunities for students to get over themselves quickly and to learn how to collaborate. We want them to listen to each other, to listen and learn, and not respond,” said Fox. “Then you set up scenarios where they have to do that – having one student critique another’s work.”
Fox says this begins to foster honesty to where three weeks later … “they’re both getting better at giving and receiving critique. And now they’re better designers, and now they respect each other, and now they’re friends, and now they live together, and then they start a studio five years later. And that started in the first class, when they began learning how to critique each other’s work.”
But what allows for critique to be received is the tight knit community that Fox has created.
Proximity leads to opportunity
“At larger state schools, you’re in a big ecosystem with dozens or hundreds of students, and you get a moment with them in a class or two, and that can be very rewarding,” said Fox. “But, at Calvin, I’m alongside students at every level of their experience from freshmen through senior year. And so, I get to know these students really well.”
Fox says he knows their parents and even some of their pets.
“You’re part of their formative system for four years. That hasn’t been possible anywhere else,” said Fox. “The words community and fraternity aren’t just thrown around loosely. We have been able to build one of those and it’s authentic.”
Fox has certainly helped foster a community among his Calvin students, but the way in which he’s prepared students to be excellent in their fields is starting to have a ripple effect. Having worked in the field for decades, he says alumni from programs he’s taught in throughout the years are now in hiring positions at all of the top design studios in the area and beyond. And they want Calvin students and grads.
“Well Design Studio took on two Calvin interns this summer, and once they left, they asked ‘who are the next two people you recommend?’ And that’s not just happening at Well, but also at studios like Mighty in the Midwest, Haworth, and Grey Matter Group,” said Fox. “Whatever is happening logistically at the other design programs that we are competing with, we have an advantage.”
