Monthly Archives: July 2011

The Changing Face of the Art Center Catalog

Guest post by Art Center Archivist Robert Dirig

Art Center’s most recent Viewbook has received rave reviews, winning an Art Directors Club Silver Award and now a Gold Award in the 2011 CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) Circle of Excellence Award. Congrats to the Design Office and Marketing and Communications team for these well-deserved honors!

Here in the College Archives, we recently began a project scanning all Art Center catalogs and viewbooks, starting back to the first one published in 1937.

Enjoy this slideshow of images, and let us know if you have any that aren’t included here. We seem to have a gap between 1965-67 and 1972-74. Stay tuned for an announcement for when they are available online!

To visit the Archives, or to donate materials, contact Art Center Archivist Robert Dirig at 626.396.2208 or robert.dirig@artcenter.edu.

Students Win Big at the ADDYs


Advertising students Adam Chang, Melissa Ploysophon, Becky Ginos and Jack Collier, in collaboration with Photography and Imaging student Jeremy Jackson, recently won a gold and two silver ADDYs for their work at the local ADDY Awards, the first of a three-tier, national competition.

Chang and Ploysophon went on to beat out over 1,000 other entries from across the country to win a National Gold ADDY for their Atomic Fireballs campaign. Film student Ian Kammer won a gold for Boxer.

Congrats on these well-deserved honors!

Surviving Carmageddon


You’ve been warned and now it’s almost here—Carmageddon, or the weekend the 405 closure gridlocked the entire Los Angeles metro area.

While the 405 is nowhere near Art Center—it’s 30 miles west!—we’ll likely be feeling the pinch here as well. The L.A. Times predicts that Carmageddon will affect Pasadena and Downtown, too.

Here’s a mini-survival guide for the Art Center community:

Of course, the entire ordeal might be over-hyped. Leave your weekend suggestions in the comments!

More on what is shaping up to be a traffic event of epic proportions:

The Colombia Experience: Design is a Two-Way Street

The following post is from the Designmatters blog.


Guest Blogger Mariana Prieto di Colloredo (Product Design, 6th term) is the lead contact of Art Center’s social impact student organization Mustard, a member of the sustainability-focused student organization EcoCouncil and a candidate for the Designmatters Concentration in Art and Design for Social Impact.

Sustainability is more often than not linked to the responsible use of our planets resources to assure its availability for future generations. As true as this is, sustainability can also be applied to our own lives. As designers, we can “burn out” when we drain our creative resources but we can prevent this by refreshing and recharging ourselves from time to time.

While we are in school the opportunity to go out and research different cultures in a new, exciting and relaxed setting is limited, to say the least.

Because of this, EcoCouncil has taken the initiative to plan a research trip to explore a new country in a different and exciting way. This last spring Eco Council traveled for ten days to Colombia to remove ourselves from our comfortable surroundings and to work on a design project at an organic mango plantation in Anapoima, Colombia (a small town located 2 hours outside of Bogota).

Our goal was to come up with one design project during our time there while doing physical work at the farm and learning the inner workings of an organic plantation in Latin America.

After days of wielding a pickax, teak planting, mud fishing, milking, horseback riding and learning all there is to know about mango trees, we agreed the most valuable experience was working together with the farm workers through every step of the design process.

Continue reading →

MDP Showcased in Little Tokyo Design Week

Art Center’s Graduate Media Design (MDP) program will be among the international designers, architects, filmmakers, corporations and other educational institutions exploring the “New Urban Lifestyle” as part of Little Tokyo Design Week: Future City (LTDW) this week. LTDW celebrates the power and energy of cutting-edge design and technology emerging from Japan and its relation to current trends materializing in Los Angeles.

“We look forward to participating alongside world class designers, artists and creative thinkers and engaging the public in an exciting dialogue about the future of our cities and the future of design,” says MDP Chair Ann Burdick.

Taking place July 14 through 17, the free, four-day public festival will span the geographic breadth of downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district with a series of museum exhibitions, student installations, public happenings and temporary galleries in the form of shipping containers placed throughout the public plazas of Little Tokyo. Under the auspices of the MDP program, the College will produce three separate projects for LTDW exploring how design and technology will shape lives in the cities of the future.

“Grad Media Design emphasizes an approach that responds to issues without the assumption of a particular type or mode of outcome and, similarly, to resist the adaptation of common assumptions for topics of technological or social concern,” says Tim Durfee, core faculty and director of amp: Projects in Media and Architecture within the MDP program. “This ethic is in evidence for both our PLAN C installation and Metropolis of Me symposium, in which we approach familiar topics from somewhat novel directions in order to reveal overlooked opportunities or implications.”

There are three projects being produced by Grad Media Design for LTDW.

Continue reading →

3×3: Trends in Packaging and Interaction

Tomorrow, join the Graphic Design Department as they present 3×3: Trends in Packaging and Interaction.

Hear from three industry leaders as they discuss how packaging and interaction design are merging, and the entire field of graphic design is shifting. They’ll share their predictions for what to look forward to as design goes beyond the surface.

The speakers are:

  • Chris Hacker, Chief Design Officer, Johnson & Johnson
  • Maggie Hendrie, Strategy Director, UX Designer, Educator
  • James Chu, Product Designer, Branding Strategist, Educator

Don’t miss this great event!

3×3: Trends in Packaging and Interaction
Wednesday, July 13, 7:30 p.m.
Los Angeles Times Media Center
Hillside Campus

Best Practices and the Business of Art

Don’t miss this lecture presented by the Office of Career Development and Fine Art Department on best practices and the business of fine art. Speaker Karen Atkinson will discuss exhibition strategies, ethics, finding a job, preparing portfolios, pricing and selling work and finances for artists.

Atkinson is a media, installation and public artist, an independent curator and collaborator. She has published and guest edited a number of publications.

Creator of the GYST software for artists, in 2000 she founded GYST as an artist-run professional practices service company. Currently, she focuses on making life better for artists and less on exhibiting her own work.

Artists’ Best Practices and the Business of Art
Thursday, July 14, 7 p.m.
Art Center College of Design
Hillside Campus
L.A. Times Media Center

Save the Date: Forward Motion

A convergence of circumstances—energy security, climate change, air quality concerns—have led to a rapid push toward sustainable transportation. California and Québec have led the charge, researching and proposing solutions from their respective corners of North America.

These solutions and ideas will be presented at Forward Motion: Advancing Mobility in California & Québec.

This half-day symposium, organized by Art Center College of Design and the Québec Delegation in Los Angeles and in partnership with the Université de Montréal, will examine the impact on vehicle and infrastructure design in light of the roadmaps laid out by each particular region.

Expert panelists will compare and contrast Québec and California’s initiatives for the promotion of electric vehicles and public transit, and examine the new technologies and advanced materials that are rapidly driving North America forward.

Save the date today for this one-of-a-kind event. We’ll bring you more information as it becomes available, so stay tuned.

Don Kubly Memorial Celebration July 30

Please join us as we celebrate the life of Don Kubly, alumnus and Art Center President Emeritus, on Saturday, July 30, at 5 p.m. in the Ahmanson Auditorium at Hillside Campus. A reception will be held following in the student dining room.

RSVP to events@artcenter.edu or 626.396.2386. Those unable to attend the celebration can view the program live online at artcenter.edu/webcast.

In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to the Kubly Family Scholarship. Visit artcenter.edu/giving or contact Senior Director of Development Wayne Herron at 626.396.2437 or wayne.herron@artcenter.edu for more information.

Don Kubly Memorial Celebration
Saturday, July 30, 5 p.m.
Ahmanson Auditorium
Hillside Campus

July 12: Apparel Design with Justine Parish

Meet Product and Entertainment Design instructor Justine Limpus Parish at the Library on July 12 at 2:30 p.m.

Parish is an illustrator, designer, educator and author. She designs special occasion clothing collection, published her own textbook, Drawing the Fashion Body, and is a regular contributing writer and illustrator for Belle Armoire Magazine. She served as art director for Liberty House of California, and created the fashion department at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, serving as its first department chair.

She’ll be sharing her sources for costume and fashion research, giving an update on this fall’s design runway, and discuss apparel design at Art Center.

Don’t miss it!

Apparel Design with Justine Parish
Tuesday, July 12, 2:30 p.m.
Art Center Library, Hillside Campus