Yearly Archives: 2013

Fall 2013 Grad Show: A master class in next-level design thinking and doing

Top companies leading the innovation economy swarmed the Hillside campus scouting new talent during Fall 2013 Grad Show. Facebook, BMW, Snapchat and Square, creator of the revolutionary cube device that instantly transforms cell phones in to credit card machines, were all seeking the next wave of their creative workforce.

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Products become customized vehicles of personal expression in Art Center at Night’s surface design class

Patterns from Debra Valencia’s Kyoto collection.

Can you imagine a world filled with nothing but solid colors and smooth surfaces?

If not, then thank a surface designer, those daring individuals who transform our vanilla products—everything from iPad cases and coffee mugs to tote bags and pillowcases—into personalized vehicles for individual expression.

In this spring’s upcoming Art Center at Night Introduction to Surface Design course, taught by artist and designer Debra Valencia, students will learn about the styles and techniques used in creating surface designs by exploring case studies, product categories, themes and other business basics of earning a living as a surface designer.

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View from the Bridge: Saluting graduating students and Art Center’s social impact on healthy drinking water and food

A Balde Movil prototype is put to the test in Altos del Pino, Bogota, Colombia.

The Fall 2013 term culminated last weekend with our Grad Show—an unqualified success attracting hundreds of industry representatives—and the arrival of our students’ families on campus for graduation. It was my great pleasure to meet many of them and share in their excitement and pride.

I began this weekend’s ceremonies by reading Everything is Waiting for You by David Whyte. An ode to the creative power of community, this poem was born surprisingly out of a moment of deep grief for the author, which makes its vibrant call to action all the more remarkable. The work begins with a warning of isolation—“Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone”—moves to an acknowledged tension of individual identity in the crowd—“Surely, even you, at times, have felt … the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice”—and concludes with an exultant celebration of discovery and the power of entering the “conversation”—“The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink” and, ultimately, “Everything is waiting for you.”

I shared this poem because I want our graduating students to find the strength to face what is calling them and recognize that they are surrounded by an astonishing depth and plethora of life. I want them to celebrate where the new edges meet and, as the poem suggests, believe they can change the world by their attentive presence.

Our students’ work offers ample evidence that this is all very much underway.

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Fine Art student Kristy Lovich to receive the Student Leadership Award

Fine Art student Kristy Lovich on board the Metro. Photo by Jennie Warren.

“My practice as a culture worker is hinged on the belief that art making lives in tandem with social action,” says Fine Art student Kristy Lovich, who this weekend will receive Art Center College of Design’s Student Leadership Award.

Each term, Art Center presents the Student Leadership Award to a deserving student from the College. The award is a distinguished honor granted to a graduating student who exemplifies leadership qualities and accomplishments that stand out above their peers.

Students who receive the Student Leadership Award represent the character, the integrity and the skills that Art Center desires for all students to develop during their time at the College. Recipients must have represented student interests by providing outstanding leadership through broad involvement in Art Center campus life.

Politically engaged and dedicated to creating an artistic community based on a culture of mutual support, Lovich provided a vivid model for how art and design can directly confront today’s crucial issues. “As a student at Art Center, I knew that the rigor of my studies would limit my ability to maintain my activism outside of school,” says Lovich. “The solution to this was to bring my desire for social justice directly into the school community.”

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Chinese immersion: Alum’s award-winning agency behind high-adrenaline campaign

An immersive experience that’s part of a campaign in China created for Under Armour by David Schwarz and Hush Studios. (Photo courtesy of Hush Studios)

In the United States, if you want to push yourself physically there’s a competitive infrastructure in place, from t-ball to the pros, to help you achieve your goals. That’s not so much the case in China, says David Schwarz (Graduate Media Design ’04), creative partner at Hush, the New York-based design agency: “The minute percentage of the population that are seen as having athletic ability are whisked away at a young age and put on an Olympic track.”

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Fall 2013 Graduation Week: So many faces going so many places!

This Saturday, following years of all-nighters, critiques, finals, internships and hopefully some fun, 153 Art Center students will graduate. As that day approaches, we take time to celebrate these creative and talented individuals who are about to take on the world and, as is custom at our Fall Graduation, we also honor alumni who have already paved the way. Here’s the lowdown for the week.

Thursday, December 12: Graduation Show Preview
Industry leaders, employers, corporate partners, donors and alumni get the first look at the Fall term’s graduating artists and designers at the invitation-only Graduation Show Preview. This event, hosted by Alumni Relations to welcome new graduates into the community, gives our graduating students an opportunity to network with potential employers and fellow alumni. The show features student projects from major fields of study at Art Center, including Advertising, Entertainment Design, Environmental Design, Film, Graphic Design, Illustration, Photography and Imaging, Product Design, Transportation Design, Graduate Film and Graduate Industrial Design.

Graduation Show Preview will be held at Hillside Campus from 6 to 9:30 p.m., with a private reception immediately following.

Friday, December 13: MDP Work-In-Progress Show
Media Design Practices is holding a work-in-progress show from 6 to 10 p.m. in the Wind Tunnel Gallery at South Campus (950 South Raymond). The MDP/Lab track will be presenting thesis work in progress from their Ciphertexts & Cryptoblob inquiry and the MDP/Field track with be featuring projects from Kampala, Uganda.

Saturday December 14: Graduation
Join us in the Sculpture Garden at Hillside Campus from 4 to 6 p.m. for our graduation ceremony. At the ceremony, we will honor three of our alumni who will be presented with Alumni Awards. This year, all the awardees received degrees in Product Design. Gordon Bruce will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, Stan Kong will receive the award for Outstanding Achievement and Spencer Nikosey will receive the Young Alumni Innovator Award.

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Mirka Meyer: Designmatters alum addresses visual communication needs in humanitarian aid context

Kenya-based Designmatters alumna Mirka Meyer

Mirka Meyer started her career in 1995 as a graphic designer in New York. She has since built up a successful career as a communication and branding specialist for various corporations and agencies in New York, Los Angeles and Frankfurt. In 2002 she came to Berlin with Pentagram and shortly thereafter co-founded the branding agency ‘metorical’ as well as the gaming magazine [ple:]. In 2008 she redirected her professional career from the creative industries to the humanitarian sector, managing acute and chronic emergencies with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF / Doctors without Borders) in the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Haiti, Chad, DR Congo and South Sudan. Her current project brings her knowledge of visual communication together with the pressing practical communication needs of humanitarian emergencies in developing countries. Mirka received her BFA from Art Center College of Design in the year 2000, and currently lives in Nairobi, Kenya.

When people see my CV nowadays I usually get a few puzzled looks and definitely a few questions. It is neither the most common, nor the most obvious path that I have taken. But I have always strongly believed in “thinking outside the box.” I know that this belief has given me a very unique view of the world and very valuable insights into the importance of visual communication within the context of humanitarian emergencies.

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Grad Transportation student gets lost and found in translation in Taipei

Sharing drawing techniques and opinions on design over dinner in Taiwan are (L to R) Jr Feng Kwan, Ying-Hsiu Chen, Raul-David Poblano and Russell Singer.

It was Friday at the end of week 12, summer 2013 term, and like most Art Center students I was busy. Unlike most students who were busy with drawings and artwork and projects, I was busy packing for a leap of faith. I would attempt to finish out my term from across the world in Taipei, Taiwan, as I participated in National Taiwan University of Science and Technology‘s (NTUST) International Summer Design Workshop. I finished packing, preoccupied with thoughts about school work and the unknowns of a distant place, when my phone buzzed. Cedric, my partner for two studios (and also a Taiwan native), had arrived to give me a lift to LAX. My classmate Raul-David would be joining me for the actual workshop, and so Cedric and I set off to pick him up. As we drove we discussed plans for our coursework, and he offered helpful tips about his home country; I realized I’d have to trust a lot of people this week, especially Cedric.

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Tracing Matthew Rolston’s enduring influence on a recent alum’s first film, starring Kristin Chenoweth

Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Nalaboff on the set of “Hard Sell”

After wrapping a 19-day movie shoot near his hometown in Long Island, alumnus Sean Nalaboff, who graduated in 2012 with a BFA in film, is moving forward with gusto. Mentored by fellow Art Center alumnus, acclaimed photographer-director Matthew Rolston, Nalaboff has attracted a lot of attention to his nascent filmmaking career, even as he toils in a dark edit bay putting the finishing touches on his directorial debut, Hard Sell.

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Realism and abstraction, domestic bliss and ambivalence coexist in student’s award-winning paintings

Art Center faculty recently selected Vanya Horwath to be the first recipient of the Franklyn Liegel Award. Named for a beloved Art Center faculty member, this honor includes $1,000 cash and the use of one of two private studios in the new 870 building to which the Fine Art department will be moving in January. Horwath’s exuberant paintings of women in domestic interiors use abstraction, patterning and gradient brushstrokes to break down the surface and the image in a language that glances back to painters such as Vuillard and Leger, while using the brushstroke as a discrete element in a way similar to that used by programs such as Photoshop. Read on as Horwath shares her response to the award and the ideas informing the work that earned her the honor.

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