“Head to Toe, Berlin” was a study abroad upper term course involving ten students from Product Design, Interaction Design, Graphic Design and Illustration. With nine weeks in Berlin, this immersed students in the design, textile and fashion industries of Berlin. Through field trips to designer studios, museums as well as input from professional guest speakers and studio work sessions, students were empowered to develop their own collection of designs focusing on head to toe wearables: apparel, accessories, soft goods, textiles and/or wearable tech.
From techno to wearable tech: Study abroad students showcase Berlin-influenced wearables
by Justine Parish September 9th, 2015
Oh, the humanity!: How inclusive design transforms the designer as much as the user
by Sean Donahue September 4th, 2015
Transgenerational Emergency Recovery: A 100 Year Action Plan. Fukushima, Japan. 2014 – Present. Image Credit: Sean Donahue
Inclusive design. People-centered design. Design for all. Universal design. Each of these practices is an attempt to articulate a design approach that puts the individual at the center of the design agenda. For me this approach takes shape a bit differently in that it also forcibly puts at its center multiple points-of-view, orientations and abilities. This practice has led me to produce some pretty unusual outcomes for a designer—graphic design for people who do not see, communication spaces for people who do not speak and technology for people who have no power. And although these projects were designed to support issues significant to others, they simultaneously afforded me a unique opportunity to question the convenient assumptions we so often default to when considering what people need.
Catch a sneak peek at the past, present and future of fonts and ArtCenter’s new Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography
by Christine Spines September 2nd, 2015
The centerpiece of the student-produced show was an interactive typographical timeline enabling viewers to create a customizable program. Photo by Nik Hafermaas
The passageway leading into the South Campus gallery is swimming in an alphabet soup of letters and familiar icons and signage, hawking everything from the latest blockbuster to cheap, fast cash loans. It’s an immersive experience in the nuanced codes and messages contained within the various fonts and typefaces that punctuate our modern landscape. This visceral typographic encounter acts as an introduction to the student-produced temporary show, 85_15 TYPOGRAPHY: PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE, which is the first exhibition to be presented by the new Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT), due to make its official debut on November 7 with the Symposium and Center opening celebration in its permanent space on the ground floor of ArtCenter’s 950 South Raymond building.
ArtCenter at Night’s creative entrepreneurs deliver the ultimate roadmap to success
by Mike Winder August 31st, 2015
JR Curley (left) and Jonas Kulikauskas co-teach Creative Intelligence at ArtCenter at Night.
“Let’s say you’re a designer and you want to make the new logo for a company a blue flower,” says artist, designer and ArtCenter at Night instructor Jonas Kulikauskas, throwing out a hypothetical scenario to explain what students enrolled in this Fall term’s upcoming Creative Intelligence course will be learning. “Okay, but why blue? And why a flower? Those decisions need to have a business rationale.”
Kulikauskas co-teaches Creative Intelligence with JR Curley, the creative director and founder of brand and strategy firm Panagram. The two worked together at multinational professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, where Curley was the overall leader of a national creative team of more than 100 employees and Kulikauskas was a leader on said team.
Together, the two have a bevy of experience explaining the business rationale behind their decisions. “We worked in a company with 40,000 corporate types,” says Kulikauskas about their internal clients. “They didn’t know how to speak our language. We had to speak their language.”
Doing well by doing good: ArtCenter students’ social impact innovations win big at 2015 IDEA awards
by Teri Bond August 26th, 2015
Though the hum of activity in the halls and classrooms of Hillside and South campuses has temporarily lulled as we await the start of the Fall term, Summer 2015 has ended on a high note with this week’s news that ArtCenter students’ innovative prototypes and projects were honored by the prestigious Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) at the organization’s International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) in Seattle on August 22.
Going bold and going home: ArtCenter’s graphic identity, past and present
by Scott Taylor August 25th, 2015
ArtCenter’s original 7th Street campus, 1947
At the beginning of 2013 the Design Office began evaluating the ArtCenter identity and considering possible adjustments that could enable a stronger, more flexible presence, particularly with online communications in mind. Our intent wasn’t to rebrand ArtCenter, but rather to make stronger use of the existing graphic identity elements that have always been associated with the College. This process led to a fascinating deep dive into the history of ArtCenter’s identity. We looked into the origins of the orange dot and studied 85 years of ArtCenter promotional materials to identify the things that represent the essence of who we are. Here’s what we found:
Q&A with Grad Art faculty member and alum Gabrielle Jennings on her new book, Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art
by Christine Spines August 20th, 2015
Cover image courtesy of University of California Press
Gabrielle Jennings (MFA 94 Grad Art) is a multi-media artist and Associate Professor teaching in ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program. Most recently, Jennings has edited a collection of essays to be published by University of California Press: Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art (forthcoming Fall 2015). This groundbreaking volume includes a diverse set of essays centered around the question of abstraction in the moving image arts.
Jennings has been artist in residence at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and 200 Gertrude Street Artist Spaces, Melbourne and has been honored with support from such organizations as the Art Matters Fellowship, Philip Morris Kunstforderung, and the Samsung Faculty Enrichment Grant. Among others, writers Harold Fricke, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, and Jan Tumlir have written about her work.
Jennings received a BFA from the University of California, San Diego. There she had the opportunity to study with artists such as Eleanor Antin and Allan Kaprow. She then studied with Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Patti Podesta, Mike Kelley, Stephen Prina, Lita Albuquerque and Sabina Ott in the Graduate Art program at ArtCenter.
With her book due to be released next month, Jennings answered a few questions about the broad spectrum of personal, professional and creative experiences informing her writing and video creative practice as well as her journey from student to faculty member in ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program.
m-a-u-s-e-r installation explores how nature became the digital world’s aesthetic obsession
by Mike Winder August 19th, 2015
Asli Serbest (left) and Mona Mahall selecting images of artificial palm trees for the Natural Wifi installation in Media Design Practices’ Wind Tunnel Gallery at ArtCenter’s South Campus. Photo: m-a-u-s-e-r
You know those artificial rocks people use to hide pipes, pumps and other domestic structural elements deemed too aesthetically displeasing for a proper residential landscape? Turns out they’re not the most comfortable objects to sit on for an extended period of time.
Nevertheless, that’s how I spent 45 minutes last week—sitting atop wheel-mounted fake rocks and talking with their creators, Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall, the Stuttgart- and Istanbul-based art, design and architecture duo who go by the nom de guerre micro architecture unit star energy ray, or m-a-u-s-e-r for short.
I met with them to discuss Natural Wi-Fi, their research project that culminated in an installation in Wind Tunnel Gallery, part of ArtCenter’s Graduate Center for Critical Practice, that explored the material byproducts of the Internet as well as how Nature has become the online world’s aesthetic obsession.
Writer Seeks Same: Film faculty Douglas J. Eboch and Paul Guay discuss the pitfalls and pleasures of screenwriting partnerships
by Matt Mayes August 18th, 2015
Spanky and Stymie, classic partners, pledging “No girls allowed” in Paul Guay’s The Little Rascals (1994).
History is full of partnerships. Some, like Adam and Eve, can be very productive. Others end in ruin, such as Lancelot and King Arthur, when the former’s secret love affair undid the latter’s kingdom. The same is true in Hollywood where screenwriting partners are an integral part of the machinery—and mythology—of the business. Understanding what to look for in a writing partner, and why to work with one in the first place, is crucial to making sure the drama stays on the page.
Film faculty Douglas J. Eboch interviewed fellow Film faculty Paul Guay on his fruitful writing career in, and out of, partnerships. Read the rest of this entry »
Student designers incorporate quantified self metrics into mind-bogglingly innovative devices for people with disabilities
by Mike Padilla August 13th, 2015
Panoramic shot of students in the Envisioning the Quantified Self class
Graphic Design student Leah Demeter found herself in the unique position of acting as both designer and potential consumer in one of her recent product design classes at Art Center. That’s because her team had chosen a challenge particularly relevant to her: develop a better captioning device for the hearing impaired.
“As someone with profound hearing loss,” Demeter says, “I face communications challenges on a daily basis. Captioning is one of the tools I use to help me follow conversations I would otherwise miss, but there are problems with the current design.”