By Melissa Alonso | December 4, 2025
Each December, the School of Industrial Design’s Make 10 Marketplace transforms the West Architecture atrium into a buzzing micro-economy of student-designed products. What began years ago as a modest class showcase has become one of the School’s most anticipated student events—an evening where design meets entrepreneurship, and where every object must survive the test of real manufacturing constraints.
This year’s 2025 marketplace reflects the course’s remarkable growth. The cohort swelled to nearly 40 students—up from about a dozen when the initiative first began—each required to design, prototype, and manufacture a batch of ten identical products for sale during the Launchpad Design Showcase. What sounds simple on paper quickly becomes a masterclass in time management, production planning, material selection, and the realities of valuing one’s own labor.
A Standout Project: Claire Walsh’s ONDO
Among this year’s thoughtful, inventive products, fourth-year industrial design student Claire Walsh stood out with ONDO, a sculptural wave-form desk organizer crafted from hardwood and wrapped with hand-applied leather. “It’s a desk stationery organizer, kind of marketed in the luxury product realm, mostly because of the materials that I chose,” she explained. Walsh said the concept emerged long before the object had a defined purpose. Her design grew from form, not function. She identifies as a “geometric designer,” noting that the project “originated from the form and was built around it, and then I found context for it.”
As she developed the piece, each curve began to suggest its own utility. “Each wave almost seemed to have a specific purpose,” she said, describing how she sized the diameters of the openings to accommodate objects like AirPods, pens, or small desk accessories. She refined the layout through iteration, learning how subtle shifts in the geometry affected not only the look of the organizer but how someone might use it daily.
Walsh said the class pushed her thinking both creatively and practically. For her, ONDO became an exercise in balancing craftsmanship with production strategy. “I’ve only ever made one-of-one products,” she said. “So figuring out how to make ten—how to make that process efficient without losing the quality—was a big learning moment.” The lessons she took from batch-manufacturing will follow her into future work, especially as she continues experimenting with hardwoods and leather in smaller personal projects.
