George Widodo’s witty campaign for Joe’s Pizza.

The best way to understand the essence of Art Center is to pay a visit to Pasadena and get to know some students. The quickest (and cheapest) route, however, is to travel to our recently refreshed “Students” page where you’ll find a mosaic of Polaroid-style snapshots of unfamiliar faces, containing inspiring Q&As about each student’s creative journey.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out a series of deeper dives into the creative lives of those profile subjects, with highlights from the body of work they’ve produced at Art Center. Today’s installment looks at the winding path that lead George Widodo to study Advertising at Art Center.

How/Why did you choose Art Center?
Art Center has a reputation on its own among art schools in California and greater parts of the world for having graduates who simply don’t work at Starbucks. From what I had heard and perceived, this school is a military base camp for the creative minds. Art Center allows me to relentlessly train all the muscles in my right brain.

What was your background prior to Art Center?
Science School + Otis College of Art and Design + Life full of curiosity.

Biggest creative challenge/breakthrough you’ve faced while at Art Center?
Getting ideas, great ones. Ideas are free, anyone can grab them, yet they cannot be controlled, confined, or formulated. It has, is, and will be the challenge of every creative who makes a living with conceptual thinking.

In what ways has Art Center helped you grow as an artist/designer?
Work ethic, lifetime opportunities and the realization of how much power an artist has to influence the world.

Describe your most gratifying collaboration with a faculty member or another student?
Working on a real brief, representing the school to collaborate with Wieden + Kennedy.

How has Art Center changed your worldview and/or creative sensibility?
Everything created and invented is interesting. In visual arts, nothing is new under the umbrella. There are only new ways of seeing things.

How do you hope to change the world through your work?
I commit to make advertising that is intelligent and memorable, which compels you to think and act.

What advice would you give to prospective Art Center students?
Do this solely out of your own will.

What are your most reliable and/or unlikely sources of inspiration?
God. The source of all.

What resources at Art Center have been most valuable to your growth as an artist/designer?
People. Awesome people. Great machines, technologies, 3D printers, nice classrooms means nothing without the presence of Art Center people.

Who are your biggest creative influences?
George Lois, Ai Weiwei,  Coldplay, Sukiyabashi Jiro, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

How has Art Center’s focus on commercial endeavors and professional careers changed your way of thinking?
Marrying art, commerciality and professionalism brings money. Lots of it.

What kinds of mentorship relationships have you formed with faculty or internship supervisors? 
The mentors here treat you like interns, so you actually work to prepare for work. Not just study.

What are some of the most valuable practical tools and skills you’ve acquired here?
In anything you do here, HAVE FUN.

What’s the role of a design career in the 21stCentury?
Create timeless design people a century from now will still appreciate. I don’t believe in designing for now, ’cause now don’t last.