Aariv Patel

I started a design club at thirteen.

Fort Settlement Middle School, 2025 to 2026. Seventy-one applied, I taught thirty, and I am building the whole thing again at Dulles.

The Digital Design Club mark: a letterform D holding a cursor.
71students applied
30I took
16meetings taught
167slides written

Now

Ninth grade at Dulles, and starting over. I had a club that worked, and I am back at the part where it is a form, a stack of paper and a room I have to fill.

The application is with the district. Profe De La Cruz is sponsoring it, and the first meeting happens as soon as it clears.

Outside school I am on the Teen Advisory Group at Fort Bend County Libraries, and I give tours at BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir as a youth ambassador.

The Digital
Design Club

Fort Settlement Middle School, 2025 to 2026. I wrote the proposal, found a sponsor, and started recruiting before the year began.

I was going into eighth grade. Seventy-one students applied, most of them sixth graders, and nearly half had never opened a design tool.

I took thirty.

We met sixteen times. I wrote every lesson, surveyed the club three times and changed the calendar after every one. In March it ended with a competition judged on a written rubric, and my students built things I could not have made at their age.

I am doing it again at Dulles.

The full record of that year, including the students' own work, is at aariv.studio.

Note, September 2026 I could have taken all seventy-one and called it a success. Thirty people I could actually teach was worth more than a hundred names on a list. I still think that.
Note, September 2026 The first application came back rejected. I had left the officers section blank and did not know a club needed them. It made the second one better.
Aariv at a classroom display explaining a logo in Canva while members work at computers.
The Digital Design Club together at the final meeting of the year.

A meeting in progress, and the last one, March 25. Every response to the final survey said they would recommend it.

Note, Sept 2026 I could have taken all seventy-one and called it a success. Thirty people I could actually teach was worth more than a hundred names on a list. I still think that.
Note, Sept 2026 The first application came back rejected. I had left the officers section blank and did not know a club needed them. It made the second one better.

Work

Before the first meeting existed, the club had to look like something worth walking into. Nobody hands you that.

Identity

The letterform core of the club mark. A cube element from the mark. A second cube element from the mark. A sphere element from the mark. The wire element from the mark.
One letterform holding a cursor, a set of nodes and a wire. It had to work on a hallway wall and as a favicon, so every piece has to survive on its own.

Briefs

Four products that do not exist, each with a logo, a color system and a type pairing, so members designed for a real client instead of a blank page.

FrostFuel brand sheet: logo variants and color swatches.
FrostFuel. An energy drink.
BobaBurst brand sheet: logo variants and color swatches.
BobaBurst. Bubble tea.
NeonByte brand sheet: logo variants and color swatches.
NeonByte. A tech company.
Glacier Gear brand sheet: logo variants and color swatches.
Glacier Gear. Outdoor equipment.

Curriculum

One hundred and sixty-seven slides across fourteen presentations, written across one school year. Nobody was going to hand me a curriculum for this.

Lesson slide 1 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 2 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 3 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 4 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 5 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 6 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 7 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 8 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 9 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 10 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 11 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 12 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 13 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 14 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 15 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 16 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 17 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 18 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 19 from the Digital Design Club. Lesson slide 20 from the Digital Design Club.
Twenty of them. Canva basics, logo tests, type and color, Figma, mockups, and the brief for the final competition.

Workshops

A Figma template of website page layouts built for the February workshop.
The Figma template I built for the February workshop. They had branded a product in January. In February they designed its website.
A product mockup: a designed label warped onto a real packet of oats.
A mockup demo I built. Warping a flat label onto a real object, then blending it so the light matches. That was the target.

Writing

Short posts about what I am building, written while I am building it rather than afterwards when I have tidied up what happened. Notes get added to old posts later, in the margin, dated, so the changes stay visible.

The box I left blank 5 September 2026