On Saturday, Apr. 12, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA) held a fundraiser downtown during Art Walk at Parc San Souci, located at 201 Polk St.
The organization had a booth set up and they sold tote bags and pencil pouches that the Industrial Design students created.
Tote bags were sold for $15 a piece and pencil pouches were sold for $10 a piece.
In order to create the items, IDSA had a competition in which students made their own designs and then voted on the ones they liked most.
In the end, the six best designs were chosen and those were the ones that were sold at Art Walk.
The tote bags were donated from Fletcher Hall, and the pencil pouches were left over from previous IDSA groups.
Before the event, Kaylie Burchard, the events coordinator for UL Lafayette IDSA, said, “It’s a really big event. I mean, they have a ton of people that come by and shop through the booths. It’s very local, so we’re hoping to get a lot of engagement and really let people know that UL IDSA is a thing and that we’re re-emerging and trying to be more present on campus.”
All five board members of the organization attended the fundraiser along with multiple student volunteers.
Art Walk happens on the second Saturday of every month, and IDSA is hoping to repeat their fundraiser again in the future.
Desmond Bourgeois, the president of IDSA, said, “We’ve looked into getting a screen press with t-shirts and stuff like that and then move into other stuff, but really we’re just trying to figure out, can we put some money on the books with what we have? That’s really our goal right now is just to kind of prove we can do it.”
Farmer Brown, a sophomore marine biology major, said, “The industrial design students have an amazing artistic mind to be able to do the things they do. One of my friends is in industrial design and has been making her project all semester. The amount of hours and small critiques that they have to do and focus on is absolutely astonishing.”
He continued, “They devote many hours to their projects and designs to make sure everything fits together. It takes a lot of hard work and a special type of patience and creativity to do what those students do.”
Kate Ebarb, a junior kinesiology major, said, “Industrial design students are some of the most creative and resourceful people on campus. They’re a cool blend of artist, engineer and psychologist—designing products people actually want to use.”
IDSA is a national organization in many colleges around the United States, however, UL Lafayette’s IDSA is the only one in Louisiana. The closest sister organization is an IDSA group in Houston, Texas.
Burchard said, “We’re working on getting a website launched as well so that people can have a more organized forum to get in contact with us and see what we’re up to with everything all on one page. So lots of things are coming, we’re hoping to grow a lot more within the next year or so.”
In the upcoming semester, the industrial design major is expected to grow quite a bit, bringing in new members and new connections to the IDSA group at the University