Carey’s Design Expo: celebrating innovation in our Senior Project Gallery

Last week, Design and Technology Teacher’s Association (DATTA) Victoria’s Design and Technology Week ran alongside Melbourne Design Week, making it the perfect opportunity to celebrate design and creativity at Carey.

The week encourages dynamic, challenging and creative problem solvers of the future and showcases the region's design talent, fostering critical thinking about design's role in shaping the future. The week featured over 350 events, including exhibitions, talks and installations all within the Melbourne Design Week theme of ‘Design the world you want’. Designers, educators, enthusiasts, thinkers and businesses came together to share ideas and explore how design can be used as a force for good in an increasingly complex and precarious world.

At Carey, we celebrated the week with an exhibition of Product Design and Technologies (PDT) and Visual Communication Design (VCD) work in our Senior Project Gallery. The exhibition display showcases a vibrant range of projects, highlighting the creativity, innovation and technical skill of our budding designers.

PDT is a dynamic subject area where students become creative thinkers, real-world problem solvers, project managers and future-focussed innovators. The subject emphasises sustainability and improving lives through thoughtful design solutions.

At Carey, students begin their PDT journey in Year 8 with options to work in wood, metal, plastic and textiles, using both traditional and emerging technologies. From there, they explore diverse pathways through Middle and Senior School, with focus on areas such as industrial design, fashion, engineering and more.

We are fortunate to have a passionate and talented group of students in both the VCE and IB Design Technology programs. This week's display of work from Year 9 to 12 featured everything from initial inspirations, materials and process testing, and from CAD modelling to refined design drawings and final production pieces. Materials included silver, copper, wood, textiles and plastics, reflecting the diversity and depth of student exploration.

The VCD area also presented a display showcasing the diverse design work of its Year 10, 11 and 12 students, offering a glimpse into their developing skills across the four key fields of design: environments, objects, messages and interactive experiences. A central focus of the display is the students' growing agency and active engagement in mastering a range of visual communication techniques.

Our Year 10 students presented their initial explorations in environmental design. Their work concentrates on the fundamentals of interior design through perspective drawing and rendering, with an introduction to sustainable materials. The Year 11 contribution highlights object design, featuring sustainable objects conceived for children's use in the kitchen. Their designs demonstrate developing skills in isometric and orthogonal drawing.

The display also includes a selection of work from our Year 12 VCD students. Examples from students Coco and Moses showcase their developing mastery of perspective and rendering in architectural representation, with exterior and interior studies, while work from Jasmine and Grace demonstrates their skills in logo design and branding using digital tools.

The exhibition will run through to the end of Term 2 in the Senior Project Gallery in the Senior School.

Simon Carver
Leader of Learning – Art and Design, on behalf of the Product Design and Technology and Visual Communication Design teams