Project Introduction
DKU SitDown souvenir design studio is a platform designed for the DKU community, aiming at transforming creativity into real products. From ideation, designing drafts, analyzing the market, contacting the production factory, to finally producing DKU thematic souvenirs and selling in multiple channels, SitDown is dedicated to strengthening the sense of recognition and belongingness to the DKU community, at the same time, promoting the campus culture.
SitDown used to front for the program of souvenir design during the Arts & Music Festival hosted by DKU Student Affairs. The peripheral products designed by SitDown are of great variety. From groceries, and decorations to toys, these products satisfied the life needs and aesthetic needs of students. The canvas bags, DKU bears, coasters, pendants, mugs, rings, and more are all created by the SitDown team. The team members worked collaboratively from the communication with department heads to the review and improvement of the original design demo, from the discussion of the budget plan to the revision and modification of the souvenir design draft, from contacting the factory to produce to the SitDown designed t-shirts worn by the volunteers of the Arts & Music Festival and the peripheral products. With the gradual progress of SitDown, they made the art festival products which were well praised by the students.
Artwork Showcase
Member Introduction
Katara
Class of 2023 Founder/Finance Director
Major: Political Economy
Kate
Class of 2023 Co-Founder/Finance Director
Major: Media & Arts
Sissi
Class of 2023 Technical Director
Major: Data Science
Jessica
Class of 2023 Design Director
Major: Media & Arts
Nancy
Class of 2023 Marketing Director
Major: Global Culture Study
Program Experience
Q: How did the SitDown team come together?
Katara: Our group members got to know each other because of DKU Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Club. We all love creative designs and cultural and creative products. In the Design for DKU activity organized by the Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Club, we observed our fellow students’ passion and potential for design. As DKU is a growing university with plenty of room for improvement on the campus’s cultural and creative products, we initiated the DKU SitDown Program.
Q: Do you have any observance after the research on the market of the cultural and creative product?
Katara: The current market of cultural and creative products is still thriving, with a variety of kinds and styles of design studios. But we did find that the problem of homogeneous competition is severe. We thereby set our future direction of effort as excavating the advantages of our team, finding our own market positioning, and creating unique styles and products.
Q: What do you think are the competitive advantages of SitDown after the research on the market?
Katara: I wouldn’t say it’s a competitive advantage, but we do have some experience in the design of cultural and creative products as well as communication with production factories. Our team is also growing through continuous practice such as the planning of Design for DKU, the collaboration with Art Lab, designing peripheral products for the Arts & Music Festival, cooperation with the Office of Assessment, and so on. In the future, we still need to make more efforts in long-term planning and stick to the new schedule.
Nancy: Our team stands for the youth group, focusing on the consumer need of younger generations, dedicated to designing cultural and creative products that combine the traditional culture/Chinese-style fashion and modern art forms and are popular with millennials. At the same time, in the form of original IP, we create a series of products. In addition, our team selects product suppliers with excellent quality and reasonable prices and gives full play to the advantages and initiative of student designers. The price is on a par with middle and high-end products of the same type, which is lower than the products of most original designer brands in the market.
Q: How to make sure that there are enough buyers for your designs?
Katara: For a beginning design studio like us, it is relatively difficult to sense the preference of the market, which is one of our main challenges. What we can do now is to conduct comprehensive market research to observe the consumer preferences, trying to design cultural and creative products that consumers would like to buy and gradually build a good reputation.
Q: What advantages does SitDown have on marketing strategy?
Nancy: Our team adopts an online sales model, promoting our products through social media. Some of the high-cost products with long production periods are produced and sold in batches through a deposit pre-sale mode. Some low-cost souvenirs/daily fast goods in high-volume production are provided from stock. Furthermore, we promote the original IP in the form of transmedia (like designing wallpapers, WeChat emoji, etc.) to increase our popularity.
