Monthly Archives: October 2010

Great Fun at Car Classic

Sunday’s Car Classic ’10: Freedom of Motion, was a success! While a little drizzly at times, the crowds were not deterred, visiting Hillside Campus to tour studios, look at student work, hear guest speakers and, of course, check out the automobiles (and aircraft, watercraft and motorcycles!)

Keynote speaker was Transportation Design alumnus Frank Stephenson, design director for McLaren Automotive.

“The Mini was the first car I ever stole,” joked Stephenson. He was referring to sneaking out in his mother’s as a young teenager. “It was that easy to drive,” he explained. Fitting that fate would have him involved in the redesign of the vehicle decades later.

Also speaking was Photography alumnus Jeff Zwart, award-winning automotive photographer and commercial film director who recently set a new record racing up Pike’s Peak in a Porsche 911 GT3.

“You never realize how much your childhood interests will influence your life later on,” Zwart said as he remarked on growing up (with childhood friend, alum and automotive design superstar Freeman Thomas) with a love of everything automotive.

Highlights of the show included the new McLaren MP4-12C, a 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic and an ICON A5 sport aircraft.

Enjoy images from the event in the slideshow below, and check out our tweets from the event as well:

The Mini Show This Saturday

This Saturday, October 23, The Mini Show will be held at South Campus to raise money for the Mini Lai Scholarship Fund. The show is being produced by Mini’s family and friends, and will showcase the work of Art Center Illustration alumni with all proceeds going to the fund. The group exhibition will feature high-quality and affordable artwork, each piece priced at no more than $300.

The Mini Lai Scholarship Fund was created out of love for the late Mini Lai, a talented illustrator and Art Center alum. The fund honors her memory by granting scholarships to Art Center Illustration students, inspiring them to pursue their dreams no matter what challenges they face.

“In Between” by Ming Ong

While a student at the University of California, Irvine, Lai was diagnosed with congenital heart disease, ultimately requiring a heart transplant. With this second chance at life, she pursued her life-long passion for art, studying Illustration at Art Center.

Lai received scholarships while at the College, and this fund exists to continue the cycle of giving.

“Mini leaves behind a legacy of love, kindness and hope,” says Ming Lai, Mini’s brother. “Through the Mini Lai Scholarship Fund, we can cherish her memory and inspire Art Center Illustration students to take on the world.”

The fund is made possible by the generous donations of her family and friends, and is managed by the California Community Foundation and scholarships are awarded by the College’s Illustration Department.

To learn more about the Mini Lai Scholarship Fund, and donate through the California Community Foundation, visit minilai.com and calfund.org/give/minilaischolarship.php.

Art Center’s 80th Anniversary Weekend is Here

Art Center continues our 80th anniversary celebration with a special anniversary weekend Saturday and Sunday.

Tomorrow, October 16, Art Center will honor four prominent alumni—industrial designer Yves Béhar, car designer Frank Stephenson, contemporary artist Pae White and blockbuster filmmaker Zack Snyder—with the Creative Spirit award at a gala to raise scholarships for students in Art Center’s undergraduate, graduate and public programs.

The following day, Sunday, October 17, is Art Center’s beloved Car Classic. This year’s theme, Freedom of Motion, celebrates the powerful combination of technology and passion that allows humans to move well beyond their own physical abilities.

Also on Sunday, we’ll be participating in the Art & Design Open Market at One Colorado in Pasadena.

We hope you’ll join us!

Wheels in Motion: A Look at Art Center’s Transportation Design Department

Guest post by College Archivist Robert Dirig and Transportation Design Director Jay Sanders

Strother MacMinn teaches class on lawn, 1960 (Photo courtesy Art Center Archives)


Art Center’s Car Classic has become one of the most highly anticipated transportation events in Southern California, if not the entire country. Over the past nine years, the event has showcased amazing automobiles and brought together industry leaders–many of whom are Art Center alumni. As we approach Sunday’s Car Classic 2010: Freedom of Motion, join us in looking back at how Art Center became a leader in the world of transportation design.


Jergenson is shown in this circa 1950 photograph with student A.K. Ragheb PROD '51. (Photo courtesy Art Center Archives)

It is estimated that more than half of the world’s car designers are Art Center graduates. Transportation Design alumni currently hold top positions at the studios of Pininfarina, Ferrari-Maserati, Ford, General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Porsche, Audi, Volvo, Nissan, Aston Martin, Mazda, Toyota/Lexus and Volkswagen North America.

The field has a long and storied history at the College. Years before Transportation Design became a major at Art Center, our graduates were taking positions with General Motors’ Buick Division in Detroit in the 1930s.

In 1948, Transportation Design became an official course of study at the College, with such influential faculty members as George Jergenson, Strother MacMinn and John Coleman establishing the school’s connection with transportation design—a field that would lift Art Center into international prominence.

Continue reading →

Students Discuss Future of Design at Summit


Johanna Björk of Goodlifer has written a very nice recap of Art Center’s involvement in the Opportunity Green Business Conference and the Art Center Summit, Projects and Partnerships in Sustainable Design, held September 22 through 24 at L.A. Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles.

Björk says that the most popular panel at the conference appeared to be Sustainability by Design, featuring a panel of five Art Center students who described their work featured in the Taschen book Product Design in the Sustainable Era. The work, also on display as part of an exhibit at the event, was produced in the Design for Sustainability 2 studio led by instructors Heidrun Mumper-Drumm and Fridolin Beisert.

Writes Björk: “The future, seen through the eyes of these students, is certainly bright and filled with innovation. The thing that strikes me about their designs is that they are simply well-done. The sustainability of the products is inherent, not something that was forced into the picture later. Could it be that all truly good ideas are inherently sustainable?”

Enjoy this new set of photos from the event, and read the rest of the article: Green Can, Should and Has to Be Profitable

Meet Sherry Wang

First term Illustration student Sherry Wang spent two years pursuing a degree in business before she found her true calling. A trip to Beijing changed everything.

“While idly browsing art galleries in Beijing, I met the manager of Primo Marella, Michela Sena,” explains Wang.

“We spoke of my interest in illustration, and I showed her my portfolio. She was very encouraging and suggested I attend art school. I applied to Art Center just days after returning home to L.A. I will always remember what Michela told me: ‘Anybody can do business, but not just anyone can do art. Art is a true talent, a gift.’”

Read more about Sherry and her first five weeks at Art Center in this great interview.

Surdna Foundation Grant to Build Teen Art Park

Art Center has been awarded $75,000 by the Surdna Foundation in support of a transdisciplinary Designmatters studio in which students will create a design for a Teen Art Park for underserved youth in Pasadena and Altadena. The park is a project launched by the Flintridge Center in collaboration with a number of community partners, including Art Center.

“We are grateful for this generous gift from the Surdna Foundation,” says Art Center President Lorne Buchman. “The foundation has been a wonderful supporter of the College, and previously awarded grants in support of our Public Programs.”

The two-part  studio, held in conjunction with the Flintridge Center, will take place next year over Spring and Summer terms, and will be led by Environmental Design Chair David Mocarski and core faculty member James Meraz. The studio, made up of 16 Art Center students from all disciplines, will work with as many as 150 youth from these underserved areas to create the design for the park.

Safe Agua Update

More Designmatters news: Change Observer has a nice write-up on Designmatters’ Safe Agua project, which we’ve written about here before, and which was the focus of an Art Center exhibition at the Cumulus conference held in conjunction with the Shanghai World Expo last month.

A woman in the campamento tests the Relava kitchen workstation prototype.

From the article: “For the teachers and students in the Environmental and Product Design departments at Art Center College of Design who signed up for the Safe Agua project in Chile, the first engagement with the problem was very close to home. An ‘empathy exercise’ at Art Center’s Pasadena, California, campus, before a two-week field trip to Chile, forced the 15-member team to experience what it’s like to limit their daily water intake to one 5-gallon bucket, and laid the groundwork for understanding the challenges faced by the slum families.”

Three of the projects from this studio—the Ducha Halo portable shower, ReLava kitchen workstation and Mila community laundry facility—have already entered the implementation and testing stages.

Read more: Project: Safe Agua

Better City, Better Life

The following post was written by Vice President and Director of Designmatters Mariana Amatullo for the Designmatters blog.

Art Center’s fall term started for us on the heels of an extraordinary week in Shanghai. Highlights included the opportunity to experience first hand the pageantry and wondrous scale of the 2010 World Expo; a spectacular day at TEDx Shanghai at the invitation of local curator extraordinaire Richard Hsu in which the theme that characterizes this city—fusion—was explored in myriad stimulating ways, meetings at the offices of Continuum and Frog, a window into a bygone China with a visit to the ancient city of Xitang, dinner with local alumni Marcus Lui and Clement Yip, and the presentation of the Safe Agua project at the Expo’s UN Pavilion and at Tongji University in the context of the educational Cumulus Conference Young Creators for Better City, Better Life.

Seeing through educational collaborations that go from the classroom into the world falls squarely within the Designmatters mandate, but even by our exacting standards of “tangible” outcomes, Safe Agua stands in a league of its own given the accelerated curve of implementation of some the solutions proposed by our students, and the depth of ongoing engagement we have with our partners at the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para mi Pais in Santiago and with the communities we are working with.

Shanghai was a global stage that allowed us to showcase the depth of all of the projects components with the Safe Agua exhibition and be there together with the exhibition’s lead team (David Mocarski, Penny Herscovitich, Daniel Gottlieb, K C Cho, Stephanie Stalker, Snow Dong and Ramon Coronado) and two of our partners from Un Techo, Andres Iriondo and Ignacio Gonzalez, to partake in the kudos from peer institutions worldwide.

We are now preparing to share the exhibition with our community at Art Center next spring. Around the same time, the project’s publication Safe Agua, will be hitting bookstores throughout the country, courtesy of DAP. Much to look forward to indeed!