Alla Kazovsky has a nice piece about the College’s Designmatters program today in the Huffington Post.

From the posting:

Art Center College of Design prepares students for “an ongoing exploration of design as a positive force for change in society.” That’s the premise of Mariana Amatullo’s talk. Mariana opens her remarks by stating: “It is an interesting moment in time, a moment of change, when creative community — designers and architects — are engaging in social innovation.”

Mariana cofounded Designmatters and has led the program since its inception in 2001. In her capacity, Amatullo does compelling work. Let me tell you a little bit about it. Designmatters is an educational department that horizontally cuts across all of the design disciplines at undergraduate as well as graduate levels—product designers, fine artists and graphic designers work together on the same challenge.

It functions at three levels within the institution. It is a magnet and research division that infuses the curricula with content-based challenges, a consultancy that facilitates real world implementation of the projects with partner organizations and a hub for external relationships that advocates the role of design as a catalyst for social change. In fact, through Mariana’s leadership, Art Center is the first design institution to be formally affiliated with the Department of Public Information at the United Nations as a non-governmental organization (NGO).

Read more: Thinking Beyond Boundaries: Art Center’s Designmatters Program