Leonardo da Vinci was a man of numerous exceptional talents. Beyond his individual genius, he had an understanding of the design process that allowed him to become one the world's most influential designers. Leonardo's contributions to design methodology are vast and deserve to be scrutinized and understood by educators. Research-based design, biomimicry, phenomenon-oriented discovery, content-rich drawing and the visual journal, and specialist versus generalist as designer are all fascinating areas for design educators to comprehend more fully and incorporate into design pedagogy. This paper articulates the lessons we can learn from Leonardo's process and how they can be translated into the university design studio to become powerful teaching tools. The hope is that these tools will expose our students to design concepts they can take with them for the rest of their careers.