Grad Show Preview. Photo: Juan Posada
“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.”—Abraham Lincoln
Week 14 at ArtCenter is always a dizzying feast of activity—walls are being transformed into exhibition spaces; projects are being completed in classrooms, shops, hallways, parking lots and any conceivable available space; final presentations are underway and every single person on campus appears to be going somewhere in a hurry. After years of dedication, hard work, little sleep and countless crits, 188 graduating students will say sayonara to Week 14 forever.
Saturday’s commencement exercises will be the culmination of a week of graduation-related activities and events celebrating these creative and talented individuals who are about to take on the world. As is custom at our Fall Graduation, we also honor alumni who have already paved the way. Here’s what’s in store for the rest of the week.
Thursday, December 14, Hillside: Recruitment Open House, Graduation Show Preview and FullCircle Panel Discussion
Thursday activities start in the morning, when students get to meet select potential employers during Recruitment Open House. In the evening, 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, held from 6–9 p.m.
Undergraduate candidates from Advertising, Environmental Design, Entertainment Design, Film, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interaction Design, Photography and Imaging, Product Design and Transportation Design will be showing at Hillside Campus. Graduate Film, Graduate Industrial Design and Graduate Transportation Systems and Design master’s candidates will also have work on display at the Hillside Campus.
This year’s Alumni Award recipients will be in conversation with President Lorne Buchman at a FullCircle panel discussion being held at 6:30 p.m. in the Hyundai & Kia Innovation lab on Hillside Campus. FullCircle membership is required to attend this event but anyone can view the livestream.
Thursday, December 14, South Campus: Fine Art Graduation Show Preview, Brown & Proud Dance Party, MDP Work-In-Progress Show and Grad Art Open Studios
Fine Art graduates will be exhibiting their work from 7–10 p.m at the 870 building at South Campus, which is also the location for the second annual Brown & Proud dance party that starts runs from 8:30 p.m. to midnight.
Also at South Campus, at the 950 building, Graduate Media Design Practice students at all levels will be displaying their work in progress from 6–9 p.m. and Graduate Art students will open their studios from 7–10 p.m. The festivities here also include the Kogi food truck and live music.
Saturday, December 16, Hillside: Graduation Ceremony
Our Fall commencement ceremony begins at 10 a.m., in the tent in the Sculpture Garden on the Hillside Campus. It will also be viewed by livestream on our homepage, Facebook or YouTube.
Following welcoming remarks by President Lorne Buchman, the baccalaureate and master’s candidates—along with faculty, staff, family and friends—will hear from this term’s Student Leadership Award recipient, Illustration graduate Kayla Salisbury and valedictorian Carly A. Chubak, who is graduating with a degree in Fine Art.
As is our custom during the Fall graduation ceremony, we will be presenting our annual Alumni Awards, publicly recognizing the talent, service and influence of our alumni.
Global design icon Kit Hinrichs, class of 1963 in Advertising, will receive the Lifetime Achievement award in recognition of his extraordinary career; executive education leader Julian Ryder, class of 1972 in Advertising, will be honored with the Outstanding Service award recognizing his significant service to the College; and pioneering industrial designer Jacques Perrault, class of 2014, will receive the Young Innovator award, which honors an alumnus or alumna of the past 10 years for notable professional achievement or creative innovation.
A distinguished designer, author and educator, Hinrichs is considered one of the most influential, respected and revered designers in the field of graphic design. Currently, principal and creative director of Studio Hinrichs in San Francisco, he served as principal in several design offices in New York and San Francisco before spending 23 years as a partner with international design consultancy Pentagram. Throughout his five-decades long career, he has won hundreds of awards and has been the creative force behind several of the most recognized graphic and brand identities known today. His list of distinguished clients includes United Airlines, Sappi Fine Paper, Design Within Reach, Muzak, Gymboree, University of Southern California, Safeco, Museum of Glass, Symantec, KQED, the San Francisco Zoo, Restoration Hardware and many more. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress. He is co-author of five books, including Typewise, Long May She Wave and The Pentagram Papers.
A practicing artist since high school, Ryder started his career at Lockheed Aircraft in the engineering department but quickly realized his calling was to be a creative. After going to night classes to develop his skills, he applied and was accepted to ArtCenter. A committed lifelong learner, he spreads the design thinking gospel to legions of business leaders each year as chief creative officer of The Right Brain Project, a creativity education and training firm. His goal is to help build creative cultures and bring design thinking to bear on challenges and opportunities in the business world. Prior to starting his own businesses, he was a creative director for major advertising agencies in New York and Los Angeles. He produced advertising for world-class brands such as Nike, Proctor & Gamble and Honda Motors. In terms of his outstanding service to the College, Ryder was a member of the faculty and co-chaired the advertising program from 1983 until 1986. Today, he serves as co-chairman of FullCircle, ArtCenter’s membership community open to anyone interested in supporting art and design education.
“We have the opportunity, if we reflect on a challenge, to question fundamentally what’s been done and respond to it with things that haven’t been thought of yet, that haven’t been imagined,” said Jacques Perrault who, through the use of new computational design tools, is pioneering a revolutionary new process to create high-performance running shoes. He integrates sports science data with writing scripts and algorithms to reduce creation time and more efficiently pave the way to making a midsole custom fit to each athlete’s movements. As a computational designer with Adidas Futures, he is leading the way to a new level of additive manufacturing in mass production on a global scale.
Following the presentation of the awards, Lifetime Achievement award winner Kit Hinrichs will present the commencement address.
Saturday, December 16: Graduation Show
After the ceremony, Graduation Show opens to the public at both Hillside and South Campuses from 1–6 p.m., where work by the newest ArtCenter graduates will be on display. The College’s dual-campus Graduation Show offers friends, families and the general public an opportunity to see the stellar work of this term’s graduating students.
