Principal Designers

Excellent designers, excellent teachers.

A unique type of design professional.

Principal Designers are unique because they are both great designers and great teachers.

The Summer Studio is a platform for experienced design practitioners who are also educators to bring both skills to bear on a complex client project. You and a small team of peers will lean into your design chops to bring value to a client, while using your skills as a teacher to guide fellows through the project as teammates. We do the leg work, you show up and shine. 

The right project, at the right time.

For college educators, the summer is a critical time to pursue activities that further your institutional standing.

For design educators, that often means taking on client work to keep our skills and minds sharp. But what we often missed when we took on summer freelance clients was the complexity and comradery that can only come with a “big” project. Freelancers don’t often get a crack at the types of projects that require teams, by definition, not to mention the effort it takes to get a “juicy” project to land at exactly the right time in the summer.  

The Summer Studio principals designed an experience for me while teaching me about how to design experiences for my team. It was really meta!

“

Design Fellow, 2024

  • In Summer 2024 and 2025, we had four Professors of Design from the University of Texas. Kate and Gray have been teaching at UT Austin for the past seven years and they led the leadership curriculum component. We invited Associate Professor of Practice Jon Freach and Kelcey Gray to join us as the Principal Designers for the client project. Each one of our faculty brought a unique expertise as both teacher and designer into the Summer Studio.

  • We’re currently fielding interest from senior design practitioners who are also experienced design teachers. If that’s you, and you’re available in mid-May of 2026 to be in Austin, TX please reach out! This (obviously) a paid opportunity.

  • Our curriculum is built on a range of ideas, readings, activities and experiences from many diverse disciplines (Design, Business, Psychology, Organizational Development, etc). Each element is critical to growing as a creative leader. For example, we read Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering to learn and practice how we intentionally design the experiences for our teams. We dig into the research from Google about what makes great teams and pull out insights that we practice together during The Summer Studio week in Austin.

  • There are two main differences. The first is that the design professors are the design team. The faculty are responsible for delivering the work and the fellows are, essentially, very skilled apprentices. It’s the complex, team-based, project work that you’ve been missing. The other difference is that the “students” are experienced professionals themselves. It’s basically nothing like teaching summer school.

  • Yes, its a total blast.

Frequently Asked Questions

JOIN SUMMER STUDIO

  • Take on challenging design problems with a talented team.

  • You don’t have to find the project or client. You just show up and let your expertise shine.

  • Leave with a broader professional network, a new portfolio piece, and a respectable paycheck to boot.

Ready to join our team at the Summer Studio?

GET IN TOUCH