Author Archives: Christine Spines

Watch and learn how KILLSPENCER came to life

Back in 2008, well before the concept of a design entrepreneur had been exalted by futurists as the driving force behind the next wave of innovation, Spencer Nikosey, was ahead of the curve, approaching his work as an Art Center Product Design student with the ambition and enterprise of an MBA. Nikosi staged his own pop-up product launch event at Art Center’s Grad Show, where he began selling his nascent line high-performance men’s luggage, bags and accessories. Five years later, Nickosey has turned KILLSPENCER into a sought-after brand and model of sustainability with a line of products produced in his workshop in Downtown L.A. and sold in his recently opened Silverlake boutique.

In the above video, produced by Bluecanvas magazine, Nikosey re-traces his path to finding his foothold as a design entrepreneur. He makes fascinating pitstops throughout the piece, exploring his approach to creativity, innovation, business and his dreams for a future that includes an oceanside multi-media creative collective, where he’ll make films and products and occasionally run and jump off the roof into the ocean. Judging by Nikosey’s track record thus far, it’s only a matter of time before he takes the flying leap.

The Collective Action Toolkit workshop equips designers and changemakers with versatile problem-solving techniques

David Sherwin leads the Collective Action Toolkit workshop.

David Sherwin leads the Collective Action Toolkit workshop. Photography by Takayuki Mark Kasuya

“Go ahead and join a group.” This was David Sherwin’s opening directive to the students and faculty members spilling into Art Center’s faculty dining room for the Designmatters-sponsored Collective Action Toolkit workshop.  Sherwin, interaction design director and researcher at frog design in San Francisco, was not merely suggesting attendees sidle up to strangers. It was a non-negotiable requirement, which I discovered when I suggested I would not join a group because I only present to observe and report. “This is all about collaboration, so why don’t you find a group and participate?”

Roger that. Next thing I knew, I had wedged myself into a table full of students seated near the back of the room. We then embarked on our first assignment — writing our names and special talents on separate pieces of paper, which we’d then merge into one document listing our group’s core competencies. This exercise represents the Collective Action Toolkit’s first step in assessing the resources available to each collaborative cohort. In our case, we possessed an unsurprising abundance of design, drawing and drafting skills along with singing, writing and storytelling. Though we had no idea what task we would be asked to perform; it was hard, at that point, to see how this hodgepodge of talents would meld into a whole that was stronger than the sum of its parts.

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Creative Footnotes: Graphic Design student re-imagines Hawaiian Airlines for the iphone generation

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Graphic Design student, Oliver Lo, created the following rebranding campaign for Hawaiian Airlines as part of a class project. When he posted his materials on Behance, the digital crowd went wild for this casually elegant design, evocative of the tropics without relying on dated island tropes (think: Hawaiian Tropic‘s burnt orange and bikinis). Here, Oliver kicks off a series of posts in which Art Center students unveil the creative process and ideas animating their work. 

With this rebrand, Hawaiian Airlines establishes itself as a destination carrier that elevates leisure travel to an experience of sophistication, hospitality, premium quality and fun. To reflect this transformation, the airline shortens its name and condenses its logo into a simple wordmark.

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Poster competition honoring Nelson Mandela features designs by eight Art Center students

 

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Organizers of the Mandela95 Poster Project suspected this would be an opportune time to commemorate Nelson Mandela’s contribution to humankind. But the project — a poster design competition conceived to align with Mandela’s 95th birthday on July 18 — may also serve a dual role as a eulogy to the anti-Apartheid revolutionary, who has been hospitalized since falling critically ill with a lung infection on June 8.

Posters designed by eight Art Center Graphic Design students, featured below, were selected for inclusion in the traveling exhibition by the South African Organizing Committee from a large pool of submissions from around the world.

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Design gurus from Art Center, Facebook and MySpace share trade secrets on the past, present and future of web design

Marshall Rake, Maria Giudice and John Chambers at 3X3

Marshall Rake, Maria Giudice and John Chambers at 3X3. Photo by Chuck Spangler.

Ask a group of web designers to describe the state of internet aesthetics and you’re likely to get as many answers as there are designers. There are few working environments more fluid than the digital domain, a kind of primordial soup where new innovations and ideas constantly bubble up, creating a rapidly evolving field where the rules of engagement are constantly shifting.

However, the most recent installment of Art Center’s 3X3 lecture series, Web Design: Past, Present and Future (held on the evening of June 26 at the College’s Hillside campus) made some major strides toward delivering a clear picture of how to best navigate and succeed in this nebulous arena.  The event featured a trio of design luminaries — Art Center faculty member John Chambers, Facebook Director of Product Design, Maria Giudice and MySpace Creative Director (and Art Center alum) Marshall Rake – each of whom brought an array of  diverse professional experiences to bear on a specific phase of the state of the art of web design.

Chambers kicked off the proceedings by offering a longitudinal perspective of digital design, from its primitive beginnings (back in the 1980’s) through its rough infancy (when nobody believed it would survive) to the restless adolescent it has become today. The popular web design instructor harkened back to a time when designers had very few tools with which to ply their trade beyond simple HTML code, which, he pointed out, remains the through-line connecting the web’s earliest iterations and the complex motion-graphics enabled sites of today.

Maria Giudice then took the stage, donning a headset and unleashing a dynamic presentation that could have easily been mistaken for a TED Talk on the rise of web design in tech circles. (That’s no coincidence given that she’s no stranger to the TED stage).  Guidice described her career trajectory, which began in print, where she redesigned the PacBell yellow pages before migrating to the web and launching her own design firm, Hot Studio, which she recently sold to Facebook, where she now works as the social network’s design guru.

Giudice strongly emphasized the notion that we’re in the midst of a tectonic shift, from an entrepreneurial culture centered on engineering expertise to one driven by design innovation. “When Facebook acquired us, it was a declaration that designers have value too,” said Giudice. “Engineers used to have all the currency. But companies are making an investment in design. I think we’re going to see the rise of the DEO – leadership by design. They’re going to be the future leaders of companies. You have to think and act like a designer to unlock innovation.”

Graphic Design alum Marshall Rake followed Giudice and echoed some of her thoughts about how designers must respond to the explosion of content generation by taking a curatorial approach to their web presence (think: Pinterest). He also emphasized the idea that the future of web design has yet to be invented and encouraged aspiring designers to experiment and expand upon what’s already been created.

“On the web your creations are always on the brink of being discovered,” said Rake. “Three things to think about with every web design challenge are how to simplify, organize and contextualize information.” Following his brief, high-decibel video montage of some of the recent work he’s done for MySpace, Rake ended the evening with an imperative to future designers: “We have a crazy opportunity in front of us,” he insisted, as a mischievous smile spread across his face. “The web is a place we can experiment because so much stuff doesn’t exist yet. It’s our job to go out there and detonate.”

Calling all video sleuths: Archivist issues APB for lost footage of Keith Haring

Keith Haring painted this mural at Art Center shortly before his death

Keith Haring painted this mural at Art Center shortly before his death

 

The Archives needs your help locating a lost video treasure.

In 1989 artist Keith Haring was invited to paint a mural at Art Center to serve as a “permanent memorial to members of the art community who have died of AIDS and as a symbol of hope and compassion.” Painted over the course of two days, the mural covers a large wall near the Hillside campus Library and offers a daily source of inspiration to the College’s growing community of students focused on social impact art and design. Haring’s painting also stands as tribute to Haring himself, who passed due to AIDS-related complications in February 1990, two months after the Art Center public work was completed.

It was a significant moment in the College’s history; and steps were taken to capture the process on video. However, after searching high and low, we’ve been unable to locate a single frame of the footage captured while Haring worked on the painting.  Can you help us locate it?  We worry that video from that event is deteriorating somewhere. And without Indiana Jones around to dig it up this Holy Grail of archival material, we’re turning to you for help.

The Archives collects, preserves, and makes accessible materials related to the history of Art Center.  We accept items on a regular basis, including photographs, documents, course materials, examples of student work, and film and video.

If you would like to donate materials to Art Center, contact College Archivist Robert Dirig at: archives@artcenter.edu or 626.396.2208. As Keith Haring might have encouraged anyone with an inkling about where this footage might be hidden: Silence = Death (and/or a serious void in Art Center’s archives).

Bright IDEA Awards: Art Center students collect a trio of medals

IDEA Award-winning designs by Nina Viggi, Marc Dubui and Shingo Mamiya

IDEA Award-winning designs by Nina Viggi, Marc Dubui and Shingo Mamiya

Art Center continued its legacy of award-winning leading-edge design with yesterday’s announcement of the 2013 IDEA Awards, which included three medal-winning student projects and eight finalists among the honorees of the Industrial Designers Society of America’s prestigious annual awards program.

“The IDEA awards program continues to be an effective witness to the state of industrial design and design education today,” explained Katherine Bennett, faculty member in the Graduate and Undergraduate Industrial Design Departments. “The process of articulating their designs for the IDEAs’ worldwide audience gives practitioners and students a forum for important causes we want to address, and to tell the story of design’s value to our clients, our customers and society as a whole.”

Each of this year’s trifecta of winning projects illustrates Art Center’s trademark focus on innovative design with real world social impact, informed by a meticulous, research-based approach. Graduate Industrial Design student, Nina Viggi’s One Degree High Performance Dinghy Shoe, durable footwear designed for sailors, received a gold medal. Product Design student, Marc Dubui, took home a silver prize for his hard hat suspension system, titled Oblikk, designed to protect the wearer from lateral and rotational impact. Finally, Product Design undergrad, Shingo Mamiya, was awarded the bronze for A Better Working Environment for Certified Nursing Assistants, a waste disposal system for the elderly.

Art Center students have long been a formidable force at the IDEA Awards, collecting a total of 70 medals over 22 years, with a wide array of inventive designs, ranging from the UnBathroom to the U-Haul Emergency Response Conversion Kit for the American Red Cross. This year’s winners were selected from a field of 687 finalists, to be announced live on August 21 at its 2013 International Conference in Chicago.

Say Goodbye to the Old Paradigm. Here Comes the Next Generation of Design-Driven Startups

Accelerator

Art Center  and Caltech today announced the launch of The Design Accelerator, an incubator aimed at helping startups grow by merging great design, cutting-edge technology and business strategy to create innovation. The Accelerator initially will be housed within Idealab, which is well known for creating and operating pioneering companies in its own right.

“In today’s economy, artists and designers play a vital role as creative leaders and catalysts for innovation and change,” said Art Center President Lorne M. Buchman. “Integrating technology, design and business, The Design Accelerator creates an opportunity for Art Center and Caltech alumni to expand on what they learned as students and provides a stimulating space for their concepts to become viable businesses.”

The Accelerator is an integral part of Art Center’s 2011–2016 Strategic Plan. Understanding students’ concerns about employment prospects following graduation, The Accelerator fills a critical gap by giving students and alumni the opportunity to develop their concepts into sustainable and commercial ventures—a bridge between academic and professional life.

Fred Farina, Caltech’s chief innovation officer, adds, “We know that making connections across different areas fuels innovation, and that’s why we’re excited about this collaboration. The combination of our complementary but very different perspectives in a startup team promises powerful results.”

The Design Accelerator benefits from its prime location in Pasadena, Calif., which has become a hotbed of innovation and entrepreneurship with vibrant creative, technology and business communities, enriched by the presence of Art Center, Caltech, angel investors and venture capitalists.

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Designmatters co-founder, Mariana Amatullo, adds a voice for socially conscious design to the Executive Board of Cumulus

Mariana Amatullo

Designmatters’ Mariana Amatullo

The intersection of art, design and social impact lies at the future-facing frontier of the design world. This rapidly evolving multidisciplinary field continues to grow in size and stature thanks in no small part to the groundbreaking work of Mariana Amatullo, Vice President of Designmatters at Art Center. Amatullo recently expanded her reach as a leader in the field after being appointed to the Executive Board of Cumulus, the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media.

“As the official Art Center liaison to Cumulus for the last six years,” said Amatullo of her motivation to serve on the Executive Board, “I’ve been able to observe firsthand how effective the organization has been in creating dynamic collaborations among an expanding global network and community of educators and researchers, but also through cooperation with leading industry and key educational and professional networks such as for example, NASAD and AIGA in the US.”

Cumulus, the only global association to serve art and design education universities, has long supported and encouraged the movement to use design principles to advance positive social change. First on the organization’s list of ambitious goals is to support academic institutions of art, design and media in enhancing their contribution to society. Cumulus also works to foster dialogue and collaboration through its academic forum: biannual conferences hosted by member organizations provide a dynamic platform for international exchange, workshops and academic publishing.

Founded in 2000 with its Secretariat headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, at Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture, Cumulus has 198 member institutions in 48 countries. Art Center, which joined Cumulus in 2006, is one of only a dozen U.S. schools granted full membership.

As a member of the Executive Board, Amatullo will help develop policies, plan activities and manage the Association’s business affairs, in addition to implementing decisions made by Cumulus’ General Assembly.

“I am deeply honored to join the Cumulus board and a very dynamic group of international colleagues who share a profound dedication to cross-cultural discourse, innovation and research,” she said.   “Through my service, I will be seeking actionable pathways to advocate for the relevance of art and design education globally.  I am energized since I believe we are at an exciting crossroads in time for our field: we have the opportunity—and responsibility–to position the expertise of our universities as a potent source for new inquiry and agency in our contemporary world.”

Watch Lynn Aldrich install (and illuminate) Un/Common Objects


As a Graduate Art student at Art Center, Lynn Aldrich experienced a creative paradigm shift after realizing “that fine art was something philosophical and critical of the status quo and yet something that could be beautiful and pleasurable and generous to the viewer.” That philosophy has consistently to informed her body of work, constructed from the ephemera of domestic life (from Brillo pads to garden hoses), over the course of her twenty-plus year career as a celebrated sculptor whose work has shown in museums around the world and is featured in the permanent collections of both LACMA and MOCA.

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