A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Headshot of Antonio Belton, a Black adult with a medium-dark skin tone, glasses, bald head, and gray and black beard.

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Antonio Belton

Lecturer

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Bio

Antonio (Tony) Belton (he/him) is an accomplished design leader with a career focused on transforming complex ideas into purposeful, manufacturable products that connect with users and strengthen brands. With expertise in design thinking, product strategy, and execution, Tony has guided cross-functional teams, shaped innovation pipelines, and refined user experiences across industries such as medical devices, diagnostic platforms, consumer goods, and structural packaging. His work bridges creativity and business objectives, resulting in solutions that thrive in the market.

Awards

Multiple Design and Utility Patents; IDEA Gold Design Award; Red Dot "Best of the Best" Award; IDSA Silver Design Award; Good Design Award; Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Design for Life Honoree

Personal Statement

Design, for me, is a dynamic dialogue between creativity and purposeful problem-solving. Throughout my career, I've been passionate about not just developing products but creating experiences that resonate and endure. My work reflects a belief in the transformative power of thoughtful design to improve lives, whether through healthcare innovations or everyday consumer goods.

In the classroom, I strive to foster an environment where curiosity leads the way. I emphasize building core skills that transcend technology and media, focusing on imparting the fundamental design thinking abilities that serve as the basis of good design. I encourage students to challenge conventions, embrace iterative thinking, and connect design decisions to real-world impact. My teaching philosophy centers on nurturing critical inquiry, collaboration, and resilience, equipping aspiring designers with the skills and mindset to innovate meaningfully in an ever-evolving landscape.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

As the beginning course in the Designed Objects department, students will have an opportunity to explore different methods of working in order to begin establishing a practice that works best for them. Students will be building a strong foundation of skills and techniques needed to navigate an informed design process and successfully complete a design brief. In this hands-on class, students will learn how to find inspiration for an idea, develop that idea into a concept, and use that concept to design and fabricate a high-level, final prototype. Basic research theories and methods are introduced which are then applied towards studio projects. Fabrication and prototyping techniques are also incorporated in order to test out ideas and discover new ones. Students advance through definition, research, ideation, sketching, and modeling phases toward two? and three?dimensional representations (digital and physical) of their work that are orally defended during group critique. 

Readings and lecture content will vary and will focus on examples of historically relevant and contemporary designers, artists, studios, and design movements; as well as design practices that highlight different motivations of the designer.

In addition to the two main projects that focus on different methods of approaching design? where students will be producing high-level prototypes, this workshop-style class consists of one-day projects and exercises designed to introduce techniques and skills such as technical drawing and sketching, form-finding, prototyping, and inspiration research, among others.

This course requires students to have a laptop that meets SAIC's minimum hardware specs and runs the AIADO template.

Class Number

1293

Credits

3