Pre-College Design Camp
Join us for KU Design Camp and enjoy a valuable educational experience while working on projects that enhance your creative portfolio. KU Design Camp is a pre-college summer program offered to high school students who are entering their sophomore, junior, or senior year and are interested in Architecture or Design. Students learn in hands-on workshops taught by KU School of Architecture & Design faculty.
Camp Dates: June 8-14, 2025
Format: In-person at KU's Lawrence Campus
Registration Fees: $1,000 — This fee includes housing in a University of Kansas residence hall, meals, studio fees, project materials, and evening activities. $150 deposit due at time of registration.
Workshop Topics for Summer 2025
Campers rank their interests in each morning and afternoon workshop topic during registration. Please note that the availability of workshops is subject to enrollment numbers. While we do the best we can to match campers with their top choices, they may not receive their first choice in workshops.
Morning Workshops
Personal Brand Identity
Instructor: Ann Alcasabas
In this class, campers will explore how their unique collection of conscious and unconscious preferences and philosophies guide their creative choices. Campers will translate unique aspects of their creative voice into a personal brand identity to include a monogram, pin back buttons, and a cover letter that can assist in their future portfolio needs. Campers will bring their creative voice into higher and higher resolution and learn to trust and enjoy the process.
Footwear Design
Instructor: Betsy Barnhart
This course is for designers who love streetwear and fashion, and who want to design their own sneakers. Campers will learn how to design footwear like the pros, from identifying trends, creating mood boards, brainstorming ideas, iterative sketching, applying performance attributes, to styling. Campers will learn terms of the trade, materials used, and basic principles of athletic shoe-making. By the end of the workshop, campers will design their own fashion-driven athletic sneaker based off of their own trend forecasting and research. Campers will be able to rapidly sketch multiple designs, create marker renderings to show color options and materials, understand and apply the basics of creating photo realistic digital drawings, select materials, and visualize their own concepts. Campers create a final presentation and a portfolio of their unique design that is a fantastic addition to any fine art or industrial design college portfolio application
Designing with Virtual and Augmented Reality
Instructor: Mohammad Dastmalchi
This workshop will introduce campers to digital prototyping through a design project, where students are asked to design an on-campus bus shelter. Campers will learn about the basic principles of design thinking, design elements and principles, and conceptualization of ideas. Furthermore, campers will develop 3D spatial thinking and will use Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology to assist them. Through hands-on activities, students will develop an understanding of how technology can provide insights into how people with disabilities experience the world, and how this can inform their designs. And finally, students get to present their work using VR.
Afternoon Workshops
Architectural Storytelling
Instructor: Jay Holley
Architecture is more than just buildings—it’s about the stories we tell through space, form, and experience. In this workshop, campers will explore architectural storytelling by creating a print ’zine (a small, self-published work) that presents a design problem and solution through a combination of physical drawings and A.I.-generated imagery. Campers will begin by identifying a design challenge and sketching initial ideas by hand. They will then experiment with A.I.-generated visuals to enhance their concepts, blending traditional and emerging technologies to create compelling narratives. The final product will be a ’zine that showcases their unique design solutions in a visually engaging format.
Urban Sketchbook
Instructor: Kent Smith
This workshop focuses on "Urban Sketch" and will take students on a series of sketchbook adventures around campus focused on observational, energetic, drawing of architectural spaces. Develop drawing and composition skills along with lessons in mark-making, sighting, perspective systems and more. Learn how to "hack" your sketchbook and bring pages to life with various media explorations and creative challenges.
App Design for Beginners
Instructor: Titus Smith
Campers will get ideas out of their head and onto the screen in this workshop, led by KU's new Interaction Design program faculty. Whether they are curious about a career in UI/UX Design or just want to see if that app idea they've had could actually make the world a better place, this workshop is the way to learn more. Basic design and human computer interaction principles to conceptualize, wireframe, design, and prototype a mobile app will be explored — all in one week!