Monthly Archives: March 2010

INSEAD Week at Art Center

For the past six years Art Center and INSEAD, a top-tier business school with campuses in Singapore and Fontainebleau, France, have participated in an annual study abroad program. Each year, a group of Art Center Product Design students travel to one of INSEAD’s two campuses to collaborate on a creative project with MBA candidates. They also attend graduate-level business courses in finance, marketing, entrepreneurship and various other business subjects.

Every March, INSEAD students and leadership visit Pasadena as part of INSEAD Week at Art Center. To help the visitors better understand the role of design and the design process, they are taken on a five-day tour of Southern California that includes workshops, presentations and visits to corporate studios. The latest batch of participants arrived in Pasadena Thursday, and will be here through Tuesday. They will tour Belkin, Stuart Karten Design, Idea!Lab, RTT and Disney Consumer Products, among many more fun activities. Be sure to welcome them to campus!

3×3*: Starting and Running a Graphic Design Business

Each term, Art Center’s Graphic Design Department brings together three LA-based design professionals to discuss a particular topic. This term’s panel will be alum designers Yolanda Santosa (FerroConcrete), Chris Dooley (National Television) and Tatiana Redin Wyden (Creable).

Find out their thoughts on running a design business, maintain a personal-work life balance, and what they look for when hiring designers at this free public event.

3×3*: Starting and Running a Graphic Design Business
Wednesday, March 10, 7:30-9 pm
LA Times Media Center, Hillside Campus

Big Picture Lecture Series: Jenny Price

Don’t miss Monday’s Big Picture Lecture Series featuring Jenny Price.

Price is a writer, Los Angeles Urban Ranger and research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. Author of Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A. and Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America, Price has written for GOOD, Sunset, Audubon, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Big Picture Lecture Series:
Jenny Price
Monday, March 8, 1 pm
Ahmanson Auditorium

Get Your Group On: Spotlight on ACCD/AIGA

If you’re a graphic designer, you’ve heard of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).

A professional association for design founded in 1914, AIGA’s mission, according to its website, is “to advance designing as a special craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force.”

Not surprisingly, Art Center has a student group affiliated with the association—ACCD/AIGA. We recently caught up with the group’s president, seventh-term Graphic Design student Amelia Stier, to get the lowdown.

Continue reading →

DreamWorlds Opens Tonight

Don’t miss tonight’s opening of DreamWorlds in the Williamson Gallery. The exhibit, a behind-the-scenes look at the artistry and imagination of animated filmmaking at DreamWorks Animation, opens tonight with a multimedia presentation, panel discussion and reception. The presentation and panel will be held at Ahmanson Auditorium at 7 pm, followed by a reception in the Williamson Gallery at 8 pm.

Drawing from popular DreamWorks Animation films such as Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar, Monsters vs. Aliens, Bee Movie, Prince of Egypt and the soon-to-be-released How To Train Your Dragon (scheduled for theatrical release March 26), the more than 300 objects in the exhibition include original and digital designs and paintings, movie posters, character maquettes, miniature sets, an artist’s workstation re-creation and other creative stages of the complex filmmaking process.

Film Department Chair Ross LaManna will moderate tonight’s panel discussion, which will revolve around the connection between art, illustration, story and animation. Panelists include:

  • Gail Currey: PDI/DreamWorks Animation Studio Head
  • Kathy Altieri: Art Center Illustration alumna; DreamWorks Animation production designer for How to Train Your Dragon; first artist hired by DreamWorks
  • Kendal Cronkhite: Art Center Illustration alumna; DreamWorks Animation production designer whose credits include the Madagascar films
  • Sam Michlap: Former guest instructor at Art Center; DreamWorks Animation production designer and visual development artist; co-curator of DreamWorlds

DreamWorlds runs through May 9. The Williamson Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 noon to 5 p.m. with extended hours on Friday evenings to 9 p.m.

(Image is from the Williamson Gallery’s Facebook page)

South Campus Gallery Salon Saturday

Need some new art? Looking for something fun to do Saturday night? You’re in luck. Saturday night is the South Campus Gallery Salon, featuring the work of photography alum Orly Olivier. A portion of all sales will be donated to the Art Center student scholarship fund. The salon will be hosted by Archetype Press and Art Center professors Leah Toby Hoffmitz and Gloria Kondrup. Don’t miss it!

South Campus Gallery Salon: “Please Don’t Feed the Models”
Saturday, March 6, 6-9 pm
South Campus Gallery

Citroëns Invade Hillside Campus

Did you happen to notice a caravan of Citroëns making their way through Pasadena to Hillside Campus last Saturday? It was the SoCal Citroën Club, who enjoyed a campus tour led by Transportation Design Chair Stewart Reed.

From Clunkbucket: “There were more Citroëns than drivers on a Saturday morning. The task at hand was a good one. Settle into the plush appointments behind the steering wheel of a 1969 and-one-half Citroën iD21F Safari Wagon and drive.”

Read more about the outing and see great photos of the event at Clunkbucket.

Images for Human Rights: Student Voices Panel and Reception

Images for Human Rights: Student Voices, a provocative exhibition exploring perspectives of Art Center students on the issues of freedom and human rights, is on display at the Skirball Cultural Center through Sunday. The exhibition features more than a dozen large-scale, illustrated posters created by Art Center students as part of a Designmatters project. A panel discussion featuring students, curators and special guests will be held tomorrow, March 3, from 3 to 8 pm at the Skirball. For more information, call 626.396.2310.

Read our previous post about the project here.

Alumnus Designs Hackable Solar Electric Car

Product Design alumnus Yves Béhar unveiled design plans for a “hackable” solar-powered electric car at last week’s Greener Gadgets conference in NYC. The affordable car will have a standard base frame, with user-customizable components. While Béhar and his design studio Fuse Project are not new to transportation design, this project covers new ground for the studio: it’s designed for the developing world. Read more about this interesting project at Inhabitat.