Building 3 is an inconspicuous brick structure on Valmont Road in Boulder. Formerly a fabrication depot for the lumberyard, it now headquarters a workshop of sorts in its sixth year of operation.

BDW, formerly known as Boulder Digital Works, is home to this space, a Colorado University-hosted, 50-week graduate program that trains students to develop marketable talents in the areas of design, research, engineering, and marketing.

“We wanted to create a program that was part of the university, but moved at the pace of industry,” says David Slayden, founder and executive director of BDW.

In 2009, Slayden intuited and analyzed correctly that the graduates leaving CU were lacking preparation for a digital workplace environment. Now, a middle-skills gap and lack of technically qualified candidates is the tech industry’s elephant in the room.

Slayden’s “anti-career,” which has spanned advertising, design, higher education, writing, and music—or what he calls “a series of projects”—clearly impacted this real-time, project-based pedagogy.

Keep reading

Rick Griffith is one of Denver’s most iconic creatives. Not only is he a tour de force as the owner and design director of graphic design studio Matter, he also serves as a Commissioner of Arts and Culture, a position which he has held for over three years. Because of his signature style, Griffith brings a captivating presence to just about any event or project he is involved with in Denver.  

A native of the United Kingdom, Griffith moved to the United States in the 1980s as a kid. His family settled in suburban Washington, D.C. (Fairfax County). And at the time, D.C. was the epicenter of the punk movement, which prized individuality and was a sort of precursor to the modern DIY movement. Being in the midst of this scene was a big influence in his creative development from a young age, Griffith says. People were rejecting the establishment, but Griffith says the message that stuck with him was “pro-me, not anti-you,” which has imbued him with an originality matched by few.  

While working in and around the music scene in D.C.’s record stores and admiring the art on album covers, he says, he knew at a young age he wanted to be a designer. 

Keep reading

Everyone in Colorado knows having a uniquely designed snowboard is just good mountain etiquette. With this in mind, Foundry 301, the student chapter of AIGA hosts an Annual Snowboard Design Competition. Students from across Colorado were invited to submit designs to the competition, the top 10 designs were up for auction at the Access Gallery + Studio on Santa Fe Drive. And this year, Oz Snowboards also chose two of their favorite designs from the competition to feature on their line of snowboards.  

Judges of the competition were drawn from leading companies in the design and snowboard industries in Colorado and included Bradley Wajcman from Rise Branding, Zack Dickinson from 7Twenty, Adam Browning from Oz Snowboards and Matt Girard from Design Firm. The top four designs got to head home with a snowboard with their design on it. We chatted with some of these upcoming designers about where they see their careers going in the future and how they plan on innovating within the Colorado economy.

Keep reading