Author Archives: Christine Spines

Speed making: Art Center students make a clean sweep in Dyson’s rapid prototyping workshops

Before James Dyson first mesmerized TV viewers with his early demonstrations of his sleekly designed and innovatively engineered vacuum cleaner, capable of coaxing the dirt from off any surface, home cleaning devices were many things but sexy wasn’t one of them. But after Dyson’s invention captured the popular imagination (not to mention a landfill’s worth of grit and grime) and became the industry standard for home suction, consumers’ perceptions (and expectations) of vacuums were forever altered, in terms of both performance and prettiness.

Though such paradigm shifting innovations are dependent upon a mysterious combination of luck, timing, research and inspiration. The Dyson company has continued to expand upon its success by upholding its high standards for innovative design and engineering. Cultivating the next generation of design innovators is another vital part of the company’s forward-thinking ethos. To that end, the James Dyson Foundation has been rewarding ground-breaking feats of creative engineering with the James Dyson Award, created in 2002, which offers a $45,000 prize to a design that “solves a problem.”

The foundation has recently started seeding the field by conducting design engineering workshops with K-12 students in Chicago. Last week that strategy graduated to the college level, when a team of Dyson engineers lead Art Center students from three departments — Transportation, Product Design and Graduate Industrial Design — in an exercise testing their teamwork, problem-solving, creativity and craftsmanship.

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Chatting with the creator and recipient of the Hoffmitz|Kondrup Excellence in Typography Award

Alex AristeiLike most dedicated Art Center instructors, Professor Gloria Kondrup (MFA ’93 Graphics/Packaging) is always looking for creative ways to encourage, inspire and support her students. In 2013, she and legendary Graphic Design instructor Professor Leah Hoffmitz Milken established the Hoffmitz|Kondrup Excellence in Typography Award. Created as part of their Legacy Circle membership with a gift from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation, the Award is given once each year to an upper-term Graphic Design student who demonstrates excellence in typography across all media.

We brought Kondrup and first-ever Award recipient Quinton Larson together to chat about the award and their love of typography.

Art Center:  Gloria, what was the motivation behind creating the Hoffmitz|Kondrup Excellence in Typography Award?

Gloria Kondrup: Leah and I share a love of type and language. As instructors we regularly saw students struggle financially to stay in school. The Award is a way to celebrate typography while providing meaningful financial support to a top Graphic Design student.

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Tiffany Trenda at Salon Hysterique: If you attend one feminist new media art opening this year, this would be a good bet

Tiffany Trenda performing Urban Devotion, October 30, 2010. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Photograph © Tiffany Trenda 2011

Tiffany Trenda performing Urban Devotion, October 30, 2010. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Photograph © Tiffany Trenda 2011

New media performance artist and Art Center alum, Tiffany Trenda (Fine Art, ’02) will unveil her video installation, Le Grande Odalisque, at SALON HYSTERIQUE in London next Tuesday, from 6 to 10 p.m. For those of us stranded on this side of the pond, here’s an advance glimpse at the spirit animating Trenda’s work, the soiree and the larger show of like-minded creative provocateurs, which runs through April 19, 2014.

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Major studios: Touring Fine Art and Illustration’s new digs at 870 South Raymond Avenue

This is the first in a two-part series tracking the impact of Art Center’s newest academic facility on the two departments it houses: Fine Art and Illustration.

A man bursts through the gleaming glass doors at 870 South Raymond Avenue in Pasadena looking confused, harried and hurried. Fine Art faculty member (and former interim department Chair) Tom Knechtel, pauses mid-sentence and offers an answer before the man can blurt out his question. “You must be looking for the post office,” says Knechtel, who spearheaded the department’s participation in the renovation of this former postal sorting facility before newly installed Chair Vanalyne Green took the helm. “This is Art Center.”

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Alumni Q&A with Microsoft design pioneer, Bill Flora

Bill Flora photo by Alex Aristei.

Bill Flora on his recent visit to Art Center. Photo by Alex Aristei.

When Bill Flora arrived to his first day of work at Microsoft just over 20 years ago, as the ink was still drying on his Art Center degree, there were only seven designers working on staff at the company. At the time, Bill Gates’ thriving empire was the Goliath of the software industry. Products like Microsoft Word had become a brand synonymous with the service it provided, like Kleenex or Q-Tips. In essence, Microsoft sold itself — so design took a backseat to innovations in engineering.

Things have changed considerably since then. It’s no coincidence that design has become a prime mover at Microsoft, driving the development of its most high-profile software and hardware releases.  This shift occurred thanks in no small part to the contributions Flora made during his two-decade tenure at the company, which included work on a wide variety of products, from the Encarta Encyclopedia to the Windows Phone. His most lasting legacy at Microsoft, however, may lie within the set of design principles (now known as Microsoft Design Language), which he devised prior to leaving his post as design director in 2011 to launch his own interactive design firm, Tectonic.

During a recent trip to reconnect with his Art Center roots, Flora (BFA, 1991) took time out to chat with the Dotted Line about his career trajectory as a high-flying design evangelist in the tech world.

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Remembering the life and work of Blue Dog artist, George Rodrigue

Blue Dog Oak by George Rodrigue

Blue Dog Oak by George Rodrigue

George Rodrigue, the celebrated painter best known for his Blue Dog series of popular canine portraits, passed away last month in Huston. The 69-year-old Art Center alum (Graphic Arts, ’67) distinguished himself as a bon vivant who showed an early flair for depicting the bon vivant culture of his native Louisiana, often set among the three pillars of food, family and fais do do.

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Art Center’s first Myspace occupation concludes. Prepare for phase 2!

We came. We saw. We influenced change as we learned to create.

Beginning last October, we enlisted four Art Center students to lead the charge in a week-long homepage takeover of the recently relaunched Myspace. The first-wave social network had reinvented itself as a community and breeding ground for artists and creative types of all stripes to exchange work, feedback and inspiration in the digital sphere. In other words, Myspace had become a sandbox custom-built for Art Center students and alums. And, as is our way, we came ready to play.

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Spring 2014 orientation: Get the 411 on all things Art Center

welcome-new-students

This week, Art Center welcomes new students to a week of orientation activities organized by the College’s Center for the Student Experience.

“New student orientation is the moment in which students’ first impressions and experiences are made,” says interim Dean of Students, Kendra Stanifer. “The orientation helps students to create connections to the College and to each other that will build the community they live in for the next 3 to 4 years.”

Here’s the lineup of activities designed to immerse new students in Art Center culture and maximize their experience here, both in and out of the classroom.

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True confessions from Art Center at Night students, captured on video

Each term, Art Center at Night holds an open house, offering current and prospective students a brief glimpse at what goes on within the walls of its open-air classrooms. It’s a fleeting, but essential, experience for career-changers and seasoned and aspiring artists preparing to make the leap into what’s arguably the city’s most high-intensity after-hours creative education. It’s also an opportunity likely missed by anyone with extended working hours or family obligations (i.e., those who need it most).

Don’t fret. We’ve got your back. At a recent open house, we asked students to get in front of the camera and share with us what Art Center’s continuing studies program has meant to them. The answers were as diverse as the individuals themselves. See for yourself in the video above.

Perhaps it’s time to contemplate what Art Center will mean to you.