Small designers working for small business

To celebrate Small Business Saturday, Fresh Artists Design Lab kids worked with small business client, Christina Kazakia, inventor of Stick-lets, an award-winning creative toy designer, to help her create additional products for her line of building toys and encourage people to SHOP SMALL on on the Stick-lets web store the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  

Ten children, from 2nd grade through 5th grade nominated by art teachers in Philadelphia, Norristown and Camden NJ public schools, worked with Christina to design colorful textile patterns to decorate canvas totes and carry-alls for the stick-connector pieces.  A group of three teens from local high schools worked on the design of a bespoke product, custom designed for the toys, targeting customers’ age and the small business’ very distinct brand.

Fresh Artists Design Lab is a signature educational program of Fresh Artists and is part of a larger, multi-faceted initiative called Cool Jobs, helping creative children and young teens explore real, well-paying jobs in the creative economy that they never knew existed. Design Labs are 3-day programs at Fresh Artists’ Studio, organized around the needs of a real-life client company to add products to their business.

The client makes a donation to Fresh Artists in the way of an artist’s fee, and a small group of young designers is assigned to the project, depending on their skill and interest. The Artist's Fee is used to deliver art supplies to schools struggling with massive cutbacks in arts funding. The youngsters donate their time as philanthropists, helping other under-funded schools and accruing design experience by working with a real client on real products that eventually appear in shops, catalogs or web shops.

As surprise finale for this special three-day design charrette, the 3 teens fabricated a pint-sized “Stick-lets Small Shop,” so the younger kids could give their client, in addition to almost 100 drawings, designs and paintings for use on textiles, a terrific marketing campaign for Small Business Saturday!  Small designers working for a Small Business!

The colorful Stick-lets Small Shop was the fitting finale for the children’s weekend design whirlwind, giving their new entrepreneur-friend a “ready-made” marketing tool to encourage customers to visit a her web shop!

Check out the "Fort Forest" Bag featuring Fresh Artists' young designers' artwork!

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