“We’re All Designers”: IP’s Senior Program Manager On Why Design is for Everyone
Barbie Penn discusses her passion for introducing Black, Latinx, and underrepresented youth of color to design education.
By Inneract Project
The lightbulb moment that caused Barbie Penn to realize design’s importance in her life involved…an actual lamp.
It happened during a summer workshop at Autodesk, where Inneract Project students were tasked with designing lamps inspired by the prompt: “I choose to shed light/shine light on _____.” Barbie had been working at IP for just a few months at that point, and was still pretty new to the world of design. She was already impressed by IP students’ creativity and their unique interpretations of this prompt, but that moment was the first time she considered the “why” of design.
“It made me think about even traditionally boring items differently,” Barbie said in a recent interview. “I thought about whether maybe [something is] designed more for the aesthetic or functionality. Whereas before I’m just like, ‘it’s a lamp and you turn it on because you need light.’”
Since then, Barbie has lost track of the many instances that have made her aware of design’s relevance in her everyday life. Still, however, they inform her work as senior program manager, alongside her extensive experience in education and youth programming.
Barbie is passionate about getting Black, Latinx, and underrepresented youth of color involved in design, starting with her own brother several years ago. Before she worked at IP, Barbie signed him up for Inneract Project’s Youth Design Academy 1 (YDA 1), with the goal of introducing him to a creative field that could lead him to financial independence as an adult. Barbie was pleasantly surprised when her brother’s IP experience exceeded her expectations.
“I really saw my younger brother come out of his shell,” she remembered. “And I was impressed with the projects he and the other students created. I always felt that IP was a warm and safe space for youth like my little brother to learn and be his authentic self.”
Today, over three years after she began working for Inneract Project, Barbie’s perspective of design has expanded. Beyond it being a creative, lucrative field, Barbie considers design a problem-solving method, a belief explored in a recent series on Inneract Project’s Instagram page.
“Design is part of everybody’s world, and I feel like design helps solve people’s problems. That’s why we need a more diverse, inclusive, global group of designers. I’m interested in design education because I want to see that happen. I feel like at IP we’re able to help cultivate that with our students and hopefully they will continue as young adults into design professions eventually.”
Making the design field more diverse, inclusive, and global requires exposing more Black, Latinx, and underrepresented youth of color to design. A big part of that is demystifying the concept of design itself, which is something that Barbie does when conducting outreach — ”getting into the community to spread the word about IP, and to find new students” at events like this year’s Berkeley Juneteenth Festival.
“A lot of parents, guardians, and teachers don’t know what design is, or how it can be relevant to school or a career,” she said. “Many times, the closest thing our families are familiar with is coding, so they assume we offer coding classes. There is also the association with design as art and the belief that artists don’t make a lot of money.”
Barbie understands design to be more flexible than coding and even art, noting that from what she knows of coding, there is often one right answer, while design is more open to broad ideas and interpretations. And she believes the field of design has room for all kinds — not just self-described artists.
“Something that comes up a lot is [parents saying], ‘My kid is not artistic.’ Even some students might say, ‘Oh, I’m not the best at drawing.’ I’ve learned, [by] sitting in the workshops, that you don’t have to be the best illustrator. Not all design careers require you to draw or illustrate!”
For these parents and young people, Barbie emphasizes another important skill that all students get the chance to develop in IP programs.
“We try to have a presentation component within every workshop, even entry-level ones,” she said. “Even if it’s just a student saying, ‘this is what I created’ and giving a little bit of insight about their work. I think that that is one of the biggest skills that all designers should have, and we really try to practice it with our students.”
To any young people who remain unconvinced that they can fit into the world of design, Barbie’s got a response for them: they’re already part of it.
“I believe we’re all designers,” she said. “We design in small but important ways — designing our day, and our appearance, for example…everyday design that people don’t think about because it’s not coming from a big company. Those are all forms of design.”
Learn more about IP and sign up for our summer programs!
To find out more about Inneract Project, including our virtual summer programs, stop by our table at the Berkeley Juneteenth Festival on Sunday, June 19th between 11:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. PT.!
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Barbie Penn is the program manager at Inneract Project. She is dedicated to the work that ensures Black and Brown youth and communities get access to adequate resources to positively impact their lives.
